PRAYERS

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

PRIVATE BUSINESS

GREATER LONDON COUNCIL (MONEY) BILL (By Order)

Order for Third Reading read.

Bill to be read a Third time upon Wednesday next.

Oral Answers to Questions — ENVIRONMENT

Temple Meads Railway Station (Historic Buildings)

Mr. Palmer: asked the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will place a preservation order on those parts of Temple Meads Railway Station, in particular the first engine shed, which date from the Brunel era.

The Minister for Local Government and Development (Mr. Graham Page): These buildings are already statutorily listed as of special architectural or historic interest, and therefore have to the full the protection formerly given by preservation orders.

Mr. Palmer: I thank the hon. Gentleman for that answer. Does he agree that this will now put temptation beyond the reach of British Railways?

Mr. Page: Bristol Corporation has refused to grant listed building consent for demolition. In view of the possibility of this matter coming before my right hon.

Friend on appeal, I should not say any more. Perhaps I could take this opportunity to say that the Government have already completed the listing for the whole of England. We are now revising all the lists and many more buildings are being added to the list than previously.

Mr. Robert Cooke: Will my hon. Friend bear in mind that there is real anxiety, both in Bristol and elsewhere, about this building and that certain parts of the station, although perhaps not as historic or interesting as those mentioned in the Question, have been demolished and there is great fear that future development will wipe out the remains of the buildings?

Mr. Page: We are well aware of that. The main portions are the Brunei fore-building with the facade to Temple Gate and the Brunei engine shed. The former are the parts in relation to which demolition permission has been refused.

Caravan Sites (Fire Regulations)

Mrs. Sally Oppenheim: asked the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will seek to improve, and make mandatory, the fire regulations contained in the model standards appertaining to the Caravan Sites and Control of Development Act, 1960.

Mr. Graham Page: The primary need, I think, is to ensure that fire-fighting conditions attached to caravan site licences are effectively enforced. I am in consultation with my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary about this in view of his general responsibility for fire matters.

Mrs. Oppenheim: Would my hon. Friend not agree that these standards which are 10 years old, are out of date and inadequate and require the local authority to impose only such conditions as it believes to be desirable, and that subsequent Ministry circulars have actually advised local authorities not to apply these standards rigidly or automatically even where they are appropriate? Could he say how many deaths and serious injuries have occurred as a result of caravan fires over the past two years?

Mr. Page: On the last part of my hon. Friend's question, I cannot estimate how many deaths there have been, but the


increase in the number of fires on caravan sites is serious and somewhat frightening. The important thing is for the regulations to be enforced and I can assure her that the model regulations could be effective if properly enforced. On the particular occasion which I think she has in mind, the facts were that some of the buckets and hand pumps had disappeared and the equipment was all out of order.

Mrs. Oppenheim: In view of the seriousness with which I view this matter, I give notice that I shall seek to raise this matter on the Adjournment.

Housing

Mr. Rost: asked the Secretary of State for the Environment whether he can now state the total number of houses started during the first four months of 1971 and how this compares with the number of starts for the corresponding period of 1970.

The Minister for Housing and Construction (Mr. Julian Amery): The number is 101,700 in the first four months of 1971 against 88,000 in the same period of 1970, an increase of 15·6 per cent.

Mr. Rost: I congratulate the Minister on this further evidence of the acceleration of the house building programme, after years of disgraceful neglect by the previous Administration. Would the Minister bear in mind that if the momentum is to be kept up, he will now have to concentrate his efforts on stabilising the price of housing and keeping availability of finance at a reasonable rate so that people can afford to purchase their own homes?

Mr. Amery: Yes, I am aware of the problems mentioned by my hon. Friend, and they are not the only ones. I was in Birmingham yesterday and discovered that there is now a shortage of bricks.

Mr. Lipton: After 12 months of Tory rule!

Mr. Frank Allaun: Is it not a fact that the number of council houses started this year has fallen in comparison with the number for last year?

Mr. Amery: I think not. The number in the first four months of this year compares quite well with that in the first four months of last year. The April

figures show a sizeable increase on the March figures, and the February figures were, as the hon. Gentleman knows, quite good.

Mr. Freeson: Will the right hon. Gentleman state the figures and also give an indication to the House about the prospective number of housing starts estimated by his Department for 1971? Will they reach 350,000, go beyond that figure or be below it?

Mr. Amery: The hon. Gentleman has asked a number of questions not related to the Question on the Order Paper. If he cares to put down Questions I shall be glad to answer them. The number of starts which we shall reach is considerably better than the number reached under the Labour Government.

Mr. Pavitt: asked the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will seek to make additional funds available to encourage a crash programme for providing new homes by local housing authorities in areas of acute housing shortage.

The Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Peter Walker): The Governments proposals for the reform of housing finance will enable local authorities with the worst housing problems to deal with them more effectively than is now possible.

Mr. Pavitt: Will the right hon. Gentleman give special consideration to Willesden? Is he aware that homeless-ness has now reached heartbreak proportions? We have never had anything quite like this before. A number of families being put out into the street are having to be put into guesthouse accommodation by the local authority. In the light of the Labour Government's approach to the urban aid programme, particularly in areas of high immigration such as Willesden, may I ask the right hon. Gentleman, in addition to what he has promised, to consider making a special extension of extra finance for housing for such areas?

Mr. Walker: My right hon. Friend the Minister for Housing and Construction is calling a conference of all London boroughs. I hope that this is one topic which it will tackle and try to do something about.

Mr. Selwyn Gummer: Does my right hon. Friend agree that as part of the general immigration policy of the Government considerably more help for those urban areas with large immigrant populations would be extremely valuable and would do much to allay the fears which have arisen in some quarters about the Immigration Bill?

Mr. Walker: I recognise that there is a serious housing aspect to the problem. I am anxious that, both in the general proposals for housing finance and in the specific details being discussed by my right hon. Friend, we should give aid in that area.

Mr. Crosland: This is not solely a matter of housing finance. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that this is also a matter of the structure of local government, the character of the urban aid programme, and many other factors? Since we have recently had the Greve Report with its full analysis of the problems in these areas of acute stress, would it not be appropriate for the Government to make a special statement on their attitude to the conclusions in that report?

Mr. Walker: I do not think a special statement is warranted. If there are any specific aspects about which hon. Members want to ask, I will do my best to answer them. We are trying to develop a total approach in the worst urban areas. We are discussing it with local authorities in the areas concerned, and I am anxious to find practical remedies.

Mr. Crawshaw: Is the Minister aware that I am delighted that extra houses are being built, whoever builds them? Will he look into the problem in Liverpool, where there has been a cutback on the programme on the assumption that there will be a surplus of houses in the next five years? At present 2,500 a year come back to be let because of people leaving, and so on. Does this still apply if the council's policy of selling off council houses takes full effect? Has this been taken into account in making the assessment?

Mr. Walker: The sale of council houses gives added resources to local authorities in tackling their housing problems. Regarding the reform of housing finance, the worst areas for

housing are cities like Liverpool, Manchester and Greater London. I think that the hon. Gentleman will find that our proposals are specifically designed to help those areas.

Mr. Blenkinsop: asked the Secretary of State for the Environment whether he will now make a statement on his discussions with the local authorities regarding housing policy.

Mr. Amery: I expect that these consultations will be concluded shortly.

Mr. Blenkinsop: After all these months, is it not time the House was at least given some information as to the broad lines of the policy? Months have passed since the initial statement was made.

Mr. Amery: I am anxious to give the fullest report to the House but it should be a full report. I hope that I shall be able to do this shortly.

Mr. Crosland: When the right hon. Gentleman gives the full report, will he include in it an explanation, first, of how the likely doubling of rents is consistent with what the Tory Party said about prices and the cost of living a year ago, and, second, how the fact that a particular rent policy will now be imposed on every local authority in the country is consistent with all that the Conservative Party has said about greater freedom for local authorities?

Mr. Amery: I do not accept the assumptions in the right hon. Gentleman's question, but I will give the fullest possible information to the House.

Mr. Kaufman: Will the Minister ensure that the outcome of these consultations will result in sufficient funds being available to Manchester City Council to make good the neglect of the Conservative Party during its four years in control of that council, so that the thousands of my constituents who are ill-housed can be rehoused quickly at rents which they can afford?

Mr. Amery: I reject indignantly the allegations made against Manchester City Council. It was under Conservative tenure that a rebate for tenants in need was introduced. But I assure the hon. Gentleman that he will get the fullest possible information and that this will include


details of improved subsidies for areas of stress.

Fire-Damaged Houses (Rebuilding)

Mr. Evelyn King: asked the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will take steps to ensure that planning consent is granted for the erection of a new country house in the place of another house which has been accidentally burnt down.

Mr. Graham Page: I have nothing to add to the reply given to my hon. Friend on 11th November. As I then said, if he has evidence that planning authorities have not been exercising their powers with full regard to the circumstances of each case, I will be glad to examine it.—[Vol. 806, c. 180 1.]

Mr. King: Can my hon. Friend imagine himself in the situation where a house has been burnt down and, following that shock, the owner is refused permission to rebuild? Planning authorities have dictatorial powers which are usually used in moderation, but on rare occasions when they do something uncivilised it is no part of my hon. Friend's function to support them.

Mr. Page: If my hon. Friend will give me details of a case in which I can apply my imagination in that way, I shall certainly look into it. But there may in such cases be road improvements and public works pending which may make it reasonable to refuse planning permission for the reinstatement of a house. This procedure does not seem to have caused any hardship in its application. It is an important instrument for the preservation of the landscape of the countryside.

Denton, Lancashire (A57 Relief Road)

Mr. Marks: asked the Secretary of State for the Environment when construction of the proposed A57 relief road to bypass the Denton, Lancashire town centre will begin.

Mr. Graham Page: Preparation has not yet reached the stage where a date for the start of construction can be given. My right hon. Friend hopes to publish proposals for the line of the relief road soon.

Mr. Marks: Is the Minister aware that there have been repeated postponements

of this project over the past 15 years? While residents are grateful for the Department's attitude to the purchase and renting of houses which are blighted, these repeated postponements cause inconvenience and delay to heavy traffic and frustration of town development in the area.

Mr. Page: The hon. Gentleman exaggerates when he says 15 years. This project went into the preparation pool in 1968 and the preliminary report was approved in May, 1971. I hope that proposals for the route of the relief road will be published a little later—in July or early August this year—and that it will go into the programme for the early part of 1972. It has been a very complex scheme with 500 properties to be demolished. We must get the road in the right position when a scheme is as important as that.

Charity Walks

Mr. Clinton Davis: asked the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will make a statement on the death of a woman engaged in an all-night charity walk from Croydon to Brighton at Redhill on 23rd May, 1971, which took place notwithstanding the advice of the police, and on the two other similar fatalities.

The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Eldon Griffiths): I have nothing to add to the answer given to my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr. Fry) on 9th June, 1971.—[Vol. 818, c. 1033–4.]

Mr. Davis: Would it not be helpful if a conference could be convened, under the auspicies of the Department, to cover charity organisations which have embarked on fund raising of this character to acquaint them with the dangers and to discuss perhaps other more fruitful methods of raising money which would bring those who are desirous of participating in these philanthropic activities into more direct contact with human problems—for example, work involved with Task Force, and so on?

Mr. Griffiths: My Department already makes fully known its advice on the matter, as do the police. Tragic as the matter is, I think that to persist in holding a charity walk on dangerous roads late


at night in defiance of the advice of my Department and of the police is literally asking for trouble.

Mr. Harper: Would not the proper answer be for the Department to seek to introduce legislation to ban these walks unless they take place in country areas? The sponsors of the walks should, in their opinion, be sponsoring something positive, not negative.

Mr. Griffiths: I am surprised to hear the hon. Gentleman demand that the Government should take powers to ban pedestrians from the highway. Pedestrians have some responsibility to concern themselves with their own safety.

Sir R. Cary: May I ask whether these charity walks have raised a considerable amount of money?

Mr. Griffiths: I am afraid that I cannot answer that question without notice.

Buses (Mounting-platforms)

Sir D. Renton: asked the Secretary of State for the Environment whether he intends to take steps to ensure in future that the mounting-platform on all buses, which is some cases exceeds 16 inches from the ground, is made low enough for disabled and elderly people, people with shopping-bags and small children to board buses easily.

Mr. Eldon Griffiths: My right hon. Friend has no proposals to change the law, but we shall be drawing the attention of public transport operators to the special needs of disabled travellers.

Sir D. Renton: I appreciate that it might be a tremendous task to change all existing buses, but will my hon. Friend consider a change in the law, if necessary, to ensure that platforms are lower on all buses built in future?

Mr. Griffiths: I note what my right hon. and learned Friend has said, but there is a difficulty here. If platforms were reduced in height there would be the possibility, with the springing of modern buses, of a collision between the platforms and objects on the road. There is also the fact that occasionally a bus is able to draw close to the kerb, thereby enabling a disabled person more easily to climb aboard. If platforms were reduced in height or contrivances were

added to them, there would be an additional problem of contact with the kerb.

Mr. Pavitt: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for replying to my representations on this subject on behalf of the disabled people in my area. Will he consult his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Social Services with a view to establishing a working party consisting of doctors and transport people, not only from his Department but also from among those working in rehabilitation units of hospitals where the technical problems can be looked at thoroughly, and will he follow any advice that is given by further action by his Department?

Mr. Griffiths: I appreciate the point, but I must tell the hon. Gentleman that, in association with the Association for the Disabled, my Department is preparing a survey on this matter, which I hope will be sent to all operators and, no doubt, local authorities as well.

Voluntary Housing Movement

Mrs. Fenner: asked the Secretary of State for the Environment, what conclusions he has reached following his Department's review of the voluntary housing movement; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. Peter Walker: The report on housing associations was published as a contribution to public discussion on the future of voluntary housing. I wish to hear the views of associations and others concerned before coming to any final conclusions.

Mrs. Fenner: I thank my right hon. Friend for that reply. May I ask him whether his Department's review will take into consideration a matter which is causing grave concern to housing associations; namely, the high interest rates for borrowing money? Is there any hope that housing associations will find themselves better placed in that respect in the near future?

Mr. Walker: In the preparation of his paper on housing finance my right hon. Friend is looking at the whole problem of the financing of housing associations.

Mr. Trew: Would my right hon. Friend agree that if housing associations are to


make a substantial contribution to relieving homelessness in great conurbations, there may be a case for local authorities making land available to them at something below the cost of acquisition and demolition? Has my right hon. Friend made a study of how that might be done, and, if so, has he come to any conclusions?

Mr. Walker: That is one of the many aspects that we are considering in the preparation of our White Paper.

M62, Balkholme

Mr. Wall: asked the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will make a statement about the completion of the M62 east of Balkholme.

Mr. Graham Page: We are still examining the form of improvements required east of Balkholme. There are a number of questions to be resolved, and we will announce our intentions just as soon as we can.

Mr. Wall: Will my hon. Friend confirm that he hopes to continue the motorway standard from Balkholme to the City of Hull? Will he bear in mind that this motorway is likely to be completed at about the same time as the Humber Bridge, which will generate a great deal more traffic?

Mr. Page: One of the problems that we are studying is whether this should be a motorway, and the effects of other planned improvements for traffic movements in the whole area have to be taken into account.

Dr. Marshall: Can the Minister say by what date the M62 will be completed to the west of Balkholme?

Mr. Page: By the mid-70s.

Channel Tunnel

Mr. Sheldon: asked the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will make a further statement on the Channel Tunnel.

Mr. Eldon Griffiths: I have nothing at present to add to the answer given to the hon. Member on 19th May.—[Vol. 817, c. 1225.]

Mr. Sheldon: Will the international private group, with its bogus risk capital, be examining the possibility of a road tunnel?

Mr. Griffiths: No, Sir. I reject entirely the slur which the hon. Gentleman has seen fit to throw across the Floor of the House. The group will be examining a rail tunnel. This is the only practical scheme that it can at present examine, because bridges are out, for navigational reasons, and road tunnels are out, not only because of ventilation difficulties, but because the economics do not add up.

Mr. Deedes: I accept the need for a thorough examination of this questionable project, but will my hon. Friend bear in mind that while all this is going on a large area of the county suffers from blight? Those who want to know what to do next in the way of development are held up, and this looks like continuing indefinitely.

Mr. Griffiths: I am aware of the problem to which my hon. Friend refers. I assure him that my right hon. Friend is making progress as rapidly as possible on this matter, that full information will be given to the House as soon as it can be, and that a decision will be reached as soon as all the factors are brought together and that Government can consider them.

Mr. Sheldon: Is the hon. Gentleman not aware that "bogus risk capital" are the words to use in this connection? If the group decides not to go ahead with this project, it will be reimbursed by the Government. What kind of risk capital is that? Is the hon. Gentleman also aware that this channel tunnel scheme has not been reinvestigated from the point of view of the possibility of a road tunnel since that out-of-date survey nine years ago? Engineering science has moved forward since then by comparison with the Department, which does not seem to have moved forward at all.

Mr. Griffiths: The answer to the first part of the hon. Gentleman's supplementary question is that the private companies concerned are at risk.

Mr. Griffiths: On the second part of the supplementary question, I assure the

Mr. Sheldon: What is the risk?


hon. Gentleman that my Department is taking into account all the technical considerations that are relevant to this great and ambitious project.

Mr. Adley: Is my hon. Friend aware of the tremendous implications which any Channel Tunnel could have, and not only for South-East England? Many people feel that the terms of reference will be vital, and they have in mind that in the case of Roskill and the Severnside Study they were not entirely satisfactory. Is my hon. Friend aware that if a Channel Tunnel comes about it will make the Avonmouth Docks the nearest overland docks in Europe to North America? Will he make sure that in any studies that are undertaken real care is taken of the national implications?

Mr. Griffiths: I appreciate the dexterity with which my hon. Friend has managed to get a constituency question into matters relating to the Channel Tunnel. I wish to assure him that the Channel under which we are contemplating the construction of a tunnel is not the Bristol Channel but the English Channel.

Mr. Palmer: Will the hon. Gentleman bear in mind that this tunnel has been talked about for more than 100 years? Is there any possibility of any action being taken in the next 100 years?

Mr. Griffiths: Yes, Sir. I think that the House will have an opportunity to debate this question as soon as all the information is to hand.

New Towns (Private House Building)

Mr. McCrindle: asked the Secretary of State for the Environment when he expects to complete his discussions with the development corporations and the New Towns Commission concerning measures to encourage private house building in new towns; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. Peter Walker: The discussions mentioned in the answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale (Mr. Bray) on 28th April have been completed and a circular was sent to the new towns on 18th May. In addition, a seminar is to be held at which all parties concerned will be able to discuss any outstanding problems. The Department will continue to hold discussions with the corporations

and the Commission in order to review progress.—[Vol. 816, c. 104.]

Mr. McCrindle: I congratulate my right hon. Friend on those steps, which are very much in the interests of balanced development within the new towns. Will he please assure me that, first, he will make a point of ensuring that adequate land is made available for private housing development within the new towns, and, second, that he will keep in touch with the corporations to make sure that they comply with the letter and the spirit of the new policy?

Mr. Walker: We shall be in constant touch with the corporations on this topic. I know that they want to make progress in this matter.

Dartford Diversion (Traffic Noise)

Mr. Trew: asked the Secretary of State for the Environment what reports he has had of nuisance from traffic noise on the newly-opened Dartford diversion; and what action he proposes.

Mr. Graham Page: Complaints have been received from an association of residents in Wilmington and district and other private individuals mainly in this area. An investigation is being carried out, and I will write to my hon. Friend when this has been completed.

Mr. Trew: While the new road is generally welcomed for the contribution that it will make to reducing accidents and road congestion, it is causing disturbance and distress to residents of Wilmington along a comparatively short stretch. As the wholly exceptional traffic noise is said to be due largely to the nature of the concrete surface, will the Minister give directions for the length to be tarmacadammed? Will he also consider providing sound baffles and restricting speed, and, if those measures fail, will he consider double-glazing grants for those most affected? Finally, will the Minister investigate the allegation, made in a letter from one of my constituents, that at the public inquiry it was indicated that the level of the road would be much lower than it is?

Mr. Page: Those are the kinds of thing that are now under investigation. This is a concrete non-skid surface, which has been used elsewhere. I have enlisted


the aid of the Road Research Laboratory to try to find out why there is this noise. When we have its report, I shall see what can be done.

Heavy Goods Vehicles

Mr. Leslie Huckfield: asked the Secretary of State for the Environment what consideration he has given to amending the axle-loading requirements for heavy goods vehicles; and whether he will make a statement.

Mr. Peter Walker: Expert advice is that the present plated limits are set at the maximum consistent with safety. I am ready to consider evidence to the contrary.

Mr. Huckfield: I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that reply. Is he content that there is no case for a possible reexamination of the margins of this legislation, particularly in view of some of the unnecessary difficulties which this is apparently causing to operators? Will he undertake to have a further look at the problem?

Mr. Walker: I think there is a danger in having a tolerance level, as is suggested, because the maximum of the tolerance level tends to become the norm.

Mr. Spriggs: I thank the Minister for his statement about the safety aspect of loading. Would he also take into consideration the damage which is being done to road surfaces by these heavier vehicles and loads?

Mr. Walker: This is one of the reasons why the Government declined to agree to heavy lorries on our roads.

Huddersfield and Dewsbury (Metropolitan District)

Mr. David Clark: asked the Secretary of State for the Environment what consultations he has had with elected local government representatives in connection with the proposed local government metropolitan district 6d, Huddersfield and Dewsbury area.

Mr. Peter Walker: I am considering the written representations sent by local authorities in the area of the proposed metropolitan district.

Mr. Clark: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the Minister for Local

Government and Development is reparted in the Huddersfield Daily Examiner of 12th May as having had a meeting with the elected representatives of Huddersfield Borough Council, and that this has caused deep offence to some of the other urban district councils which would form the larger Huddersfield metropolitan district? Would he now assure us that he will meet other representatives from the metropolitan area to have further discussions on local Government reform?

Mr. Walker: There is no need for anxieties here. Obviously, Ministers from my Department who are at present going to various parts of the country, when visiting a local authority for whatever reason, are willing to discuss with local authority members any topic which it wants to raise. This has occurred on a number of Ministerial visits. It would be impossible to start receiving delegations from all 1,200 local authorities.

Mr. Crosland: In that case, how is it that I know nothing of any Ministerial visit to Grimsby?

Mr. Walker: We have not been invited. I trust that the right hon. Gentleman will arrange an invitation.

Home Ownership

Mr. Moate: asked the Secretary of State for the Environment if he is satisfied that his policies to encourage home ownership are meeting with success; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. Amery: There are already encouraging signs, and I am confident that we are moving along the right lines.

Mr. Moate: I thank my right hon. Friend for that reply, which I am sure we all wholeheartedly endorse. Has he also seen the figures from the Building Societies Association showing that in the first quarter of the year the number of advances was up by 25 per cent. over the last year of the Labour Government? Is this not a tribute to the success of the policy which he is pursuing so vigorously?

Mr. Amery: I thank my hon. Friend for what he said. I would not disagree.

Mr. Hugh Jenkins: Although the Minister's hon. Friend may be satisfied with that reply, is he aware that no one on this side is at all satisfied with it?


Would he take some action in order to look after the position of young married couples who are finding it increasingly difficult to find anywhere to live, largely because of the increase in the cost of housing, which he has done nothing to bring down, and which has risen enormously since the Government have been in power?

Mr. Amery: I am sorry for the implication in that question that the hon. Member regrets the improvement in the housing figures.

Mr. Evelyn King: Does not the increase in home ownership depend largely on the amount of land released upon which to build and the price at which it is available? By what percentage has the amount of land available for building increased since the circular issued on the subject a few months ago?

Mr. Amery: My hon. Friend is, of course, entirely right to say that land is a key to the success of our policies. Local authorities have been making considerable efforts to make more land available. I was up in the Midlands yesterday, and the figures I was given there were very encouraging. I do not have the percentage increase figures with me, but if my hon. Friend would care to put down a question, I will certainly answer it.

Mr. Spearing: Would the right hon. Gentleman not agree that the global totals given by the Building Societies Association for new mortgages and the global sum include a substantial proportion of those moving from one house to another? Would he consider asking the Association in future to divide the figures between those who are moving house and those who are taking up mortgages for the first time?

Mr. Amery: I will examine this with the Department's statisticians. Even moving from one house to another often makes new housing opportunities available for those who are without houses at present.

Cookham (Green Belt)

Dr. Glyn: asked the Secretary of State for the Environment what proposals he has in mind for ensuring that the proposed green belt within the Cookham

Rural District Council is not altered by the release of land for development.

Mr. Graham Page: No special action is necessary. Green belt policies apply in proposed green belt areas until such time as final decisions are taken on them or on specific planning applications.

Dr. Glyn: I thank my hon. Friend for his helpful reply. Would he agree that it would be better if these proposed green belts were confirmed, as it would remove a great deal of speculation by builders? Is he aware that Cookham R.D.C. has made available what it considers a considerable amount of land, particularly for council housing, and would he in any representations which the Council makes on appeals, consider its views very carefully before coming to a final decision? Finally, is he aware that if building continues, the towns of Windsor and Maidenhead will be joined together, and there will be no green belt at all?

Mr. Page: The boundaries of green belts have to be settled with great care, but the policy of this Government, where they have approved proposed green belts, is to allow development only in a very special circumstance. We are well aware of the pressure in the area to which my hon. Friend refers in Cookham. The circular which was issued by my Department a little time ago emphasises the need to avoid harming green belts, and our general policy in relation to them remains unchanged.

Housing Improvement Grants

Mr. Tebbit: asked the Secretary of State for the Environment what was the total number of improvement grants approved during the first quarter of 1971; and how this compares with the figure for the comparable period of 1970.

Mr. Amery: It was 40,950; this figure is 42 per cent. more than in the first quarter of 1970.

Mr. Tebbit: I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his Department's success in getting a much higher take-up of these grants than has ever been achieved before. Would he also remember that many authorities are now back in Labour hands—hands that had a dreadful reputation for bulldozing areas of sound housing, whose residents had deep roots in the


places in which they had lived for years, and replacing them with the potential slums of the next century? Would he continue to put great emphasis on the improvement of these good old houses?

Mr. Amery: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his endorsement of our policies, for which he has always consistently pressed. I take his second point very much to heart. It is, of course, far better to improve houses where this can be done than to tear them down, because of all the human implications. People like living in the community to which they are attached, where they have their friends.

Mr. Leadbitter: Under what legislation did these improvement grants come about? Would the Minister confirm that they are agreed, passed and decided upon under the provisions of the Labour Government's 1969 Housing Act?

Mr. Amery: I am glad to pay wholehearted tribute to Lord Greenwood for his work in this matter. We are building on the foundations that he laid, which he was not able to exploit or develop as much as he might have, just as we are looking forward very much to building on the foundations of fair rents bequeathed to us by the right hon. Member for Coventry, East (Mr. Crossman).

Mr. Freeson: In view of his very welcome congratulations to the last Labour Administration for the introduction of the Act in question, would the Minister reject the insulting observations of the reactionary Member for Epping (Mr. Tebbit)? Coming to the specific point about the operation of the Act and the take-up—here I put a non-polemical point—would the Minister accept that it is important for the future monitoring of the success of this Act in improvements that we do not just register the statistics and the grants which are approved but find some way of registering the actual take-up of the approvals to get an accurate picture of what is happening down in the districts? Would the Minister consider this point seriously in the Department?

Mr. Amery: On what the hon. Gentleman calls the non-polemical side, I will discuss this with our statisticians. We have so far simply been following in the footsteps of our predecessors. On his polemical point, my answer would be in the negative. I understood my hon. Friend to be taking the Labour Party to task for

not having made the best use of the legislative opportunity which it had achieved in 1969.

A57 Road, Rather Valley

Mr. Hardy: asked the Secretary of State for the Environment how many projects are planned, and how much it is proposed to spend, in making improvements to the A57 in the Rother Valley constituency during the next three years.

Mr. Graham Page: Three, totalling some £33,000.

Mr. Hardy: I thank the Minister for that information, inadequate though it may be, and for the modest improvement which he recently promised to have carried out at the Todwick cross roads on that road. Will he take a much more urgent look at the situation in the growing parish of Aston, where the conditions, as a result of the heavy traffic on the A57, are most unsatisfactory? It seems to me and many others in the area that something will have to be done to provide a bypass at an early date.

Mr. Page: Yes. I am very conscious of the difficulties of Aston. It is Government policy to favour bypasses when other factors are equal, and we are looking very seriously at this problem there. This is, of course, all mixed up with the question of the Mosborough expressway and with a comprehensive development area. The whole matter is rather complex.

Motorway Safety Barriers

Mr. Thomas Cox: asked the Secretary of State for the Environment if he is satisfied with the progress being made on the installing of safety barriers on motorways; and if He will make a statement.

Mr. Graham Page: As the central reserve safety barrier programme is now under way and installation is proceeding on time, I am well satisfied with progress.

Mr. Cox: While noting that answer, may I ask the Minister to agree that the installing of safety reservation barriers on existing motorways has unfortunately been slow, with less than 100 miles of such barriers having so far been provided? In view of the continuing number of accidents and the loss of life when


vehicles cross the central reservation, is it not time for the Department to give greater priority to this provision?

Mr. Page: The work is up to the programme announced by my right hon. Friend the Minister for Transport Industries last year, when he gave the figure of 242 miles by the end of April, 1972, with a 1,000-mile programme by 1975. We are working on the basis of the busiest first and are trying to make this provision where the danger occurs.

Sir J. Langford-Holt: While welcoming the creation of physical barriers, may I ask my hon. Friend to agree that an additional hazard is the light danger and that a considerable risk and danger still exists after dark because none of these barriers goes up to the light level?

Mr. Page: That is another problem with which I would be pleased to deal if my hon. Friend would table a Question on the subject.

Mr. Farr: Is my hon. Friend bearing in mind the fact that the central reservation is sometimes needed by a driver who has had a puncture and wishes to move off the road to effect a repair? When a central barrier is placed in position it is impossible for the driver to pull in to the central reservation. Is my hon. Friend aware that the driver must try to get across to the near-side parking lane, often with attendant risk to vehicles?

Mr. Page: It is really a matter of choice between safety provisions. We have chosen barriers as being the provision which will give most safety.

Heavy Lorries (Goods Distribution)

Mr. Montgomery: asked the Secretary of State for the Environment what steps he is taking to investigate the distribution of goods in towns by heavy lorries, in the light of the work being carried out by his working party.

Mr. Eldon Griffiths: My right hon. Friend is considering with the road haulage industry the whole question of lorries and the environment.

Mr. Montgomery: Will my hon. Friend bear in mind that one of the most serious problems is the indiscriminate parking of

lorries in town centres? May we be assured that when these discussions take place, provision will be made for street parking for lorries to try to get rid of some of the traffic chaos that exists?

Mr. Griffiths: I take note of and agree very much with my hon. Friend's remarks. The report of my Department's working party on lorry parking has now been received and is being studied. Arrangements are being made for its publication.

Mr. Arthur Lewis: I was interested to hear the Minister's comments about an investigation having been made into lorry parking. Is he aware that people living in poorer parts of the country, and particularly the East End of London, feel that these lorries are being allowed to park in their streets all day and every day, all night and every night, often right outside their front doors, making it difficult for them to get in and out, when in the more salubrious and wealthy areas such as Berkeley Square and the Mall the police move on these lorries as soon as they attempt to park? Why cannot we in the poorer parts of London have the same treatment as those living in Smith Square, Berkeley Square and similar salubrious areas?

Mr. Griffiths: I hope that the hon. Gentleman is not suggesting that the police operate a discriminatory means test in the enforcement of the law.

Mr. Fernyhough: He is.

Mr. Arthur Lewis: They do.

Mr. Griffiths: If he is, then I reject it totally.

Mr. Kinsey: Will my hon. Friend get the working party to look into the results of the "Operation Moondrop" experiment which was done into the delivery of goods to see whether we can get less congestion during the daytime, and possibly the cheaper delivery of goods, which will perhaps be reflected in the housewife's shopping purse?

Mr. Griffiths: I appreciate that some advantages are to be won from making deliveries by night. However, my hon. Friend will be aware that not everyone is anxious to have noise and fumes during the night, when most people are trying to sleep.

Development Areas (Roads)

Mr. Michael Roberts: asked the Secretary of State for the Environment if he is satisfied with the adequacy of roads for which he is responsible in the development areas; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. Graham Page: The plans for inter-urban trunk roads in England which my right hon. Friend hopes to announce very shortly will fully reflect the Government's pledge to improve roads in the development areas.

Mr. Roberts: May I inform my hon. Friend that that answer will be welcomed by most hon. Members who represent, and the people living in, development areas?

Concessionary Fares

Mr. Fox: asked the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will circulate details of a general formula relating to concessionary fares.

Mr. Eldon Griffiths: No, Sir. Proposals for a formula were circulated last year but attracted little support.

Mr. Fox: Is my hon. Friend aware that hon. Members who have more than one local authority in their constituencies are placed in great difficulty when one authority is giving these concessions and the others are not, and that it is extremely difficult to explain to elderly citizens how this system can be fair?

Mr. Griffiths: I agree that there are many things about local government which are difficult to explain to constituents. As long as we have such a large number of local authorities this problem is likely to be with us.

Mr. Mulley: Is the Minister aware not only that this system affects one local authority as opposed to another, but that the matter is of great concern to the traffic commissioners when requests for fares increases are before them? Is he aware that if many local authorities could make arrangements where only marginal extra costs are involved for old people and in those cases the marginal difference could be borne by the ratepayers, it would provide a more satisfactory system and result in more concessionary schemes coming into operation compared with

the present arrangement, which attempts to secure an average charge? Will his Department give real guidance to local authorities on this matter?

Mr. Griffiths: The right hon. Gentleman is right but, as I say, we consulted local authorities and the bus associations a year or so ago and there was very little support indeed for this proposal. I can only tell the right hon. Gentleman that if there is evidence of general need, and I accept that there might be, we shall be very willing to reopen discussions with the associations concerned.

Disabled Persons (Car Parking)

Mr. Farr: asked the Secretary of State for the Environment what steps he is taking to assist drivers of vehicles carrying disabled passengers in finding parking spaces in towns.

Mr. Graham Page: The question of helping such drivers to find parking space is a local matter. My right hon. Friend hopes shortly to make regulations which will make it possible for drivers of disabled passengers, once they have found space where parking is permitted, to stay there longer than the designated period.

Mr. Farr: I am delighted to hear that. Lest there be delay before his intended legislation comes about, may I ask my hon. Friend to draw the attention of local authorities to the very grave difficulties in which drivers of disabled passengers find themselves when trying to wait for disabled passengers to finish then shopping, and that often such drivers are moved along by unsympathetic traffic wardens?

Mr. Page: I hope that this problem will be solved as a result of the regulations. I regret that there has been some delay, but it has been necessary to consult fully the local authorities, the G.L.C. and the disabled persons' associations. The important point to bear in mind is that when these regulations come out, which I hope will be shortly, they will for the first time cover disabled passengers and institutions caring for the disabled as well as the drivers themselves.

Mr. Edwin Wainwright: Will the Minister consider the cost of parking for disabled people, many of whom live on low incomes and find it difficult to find


the money for this purpose? Is he aware that in many instances they must park considerable distances from shopping centres, when they should be entitled to park as near the shops as possible?

Mr. Page: The regulations will mean that once they have parked, there will not be a parking fee for the length of time they stay at that parking place, and they will be able to stay there the whole day without a further fee.

Transport Holding Company

Mr. J. H. Osborn: asked the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will introduce legislation for the winding up of the Transport Holding Company and for the disposal of its subsidiaries.

Mr. Peter Walker: I hope to do so early next Session.

Mr. Osborn: Is my right hon. Friend aware that this decision is welcomed in view of the fact that the financial results this year have been very disappointing indeed? Will he confirm that they have been a disappointment to him?

Mr. Walker: It is always a disappointment to see a fall in profits take place with a concern such as this, but I am sure that the decision is right.

Mr. Mulley: While deploring the decision to dispose of public assets such as Thomas Cook, may I ask the right hon. Gentleman to ensure, if he intends to persist with this policy, which I hope he does not, that a proper price is obtained? Will the public tender procedure apply? If the right hon. Gentleman approves of this procedure, will he explain why he did not adopt it in the case of Lunn-Poly recently, and how did it happen that these assets were disposed of ahead of the legislation which I understand is necessary?

Mr. Walker: I must say that the prospectus for a public tender on Lunn-Poly would have been rather a sad document. It was announced that this was to be disposed of on 27th January. I am sure that the chairman carefully examined every potentially serious offer. Regarding Thomas Cook, we will certainly ensure that we get the maximum possible price for it.

Capital Programme (Circular 2/70)

Miss Fookes: asked the Secretary of State for the Environment whether, in the light of experience of its operation, he will amend Circular 2/70, Capital Programme, under which certain costs for key services such as education are charged to the locally determined schemes pool to the detriment of the latter.

Mr. Graham Page: I am considering this matter as part of the review of the circular which is now in progress but if any service is taken out of the pool the size of the pool would be correspondingly reduced.

Miss Fookes: May I point out that it causes considerable embarrassment if the locally-determined schemes pool is somewhat small and a local authority such as the London Borough of Merton has to dip into it, in effect financing capital projects? This is a serious problem.

Mr. Page: We are looking at the circular again and the rules for next year, but the intention of the new system was that instead of the Government deciding what authorities should spend on furnishing and equipping a school, the discretion would be left to them within the total of their allocation. I notice that the London Borough of Merton was given an extra allocation of £200,000, following its representations on this subject, to meet its commitments in the matter of furnishing schools in its area.

Rail and Waterway Traffic

Mr. Raphael Tuck: asked the Secretary of State for the Environment whether in view of the fact that in absolute terms every railway and waterway administration which makes returns to the Economic Commission for Europe shows an increase of ton-miles in the period 1950 to 1969, except for Great Britain, which shows a reduction, he will take steps to redress this imbalance.

Mr. Eldon Griffiths: No, Sir.

Mr. Tuck: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that, parallel with the difficulties with rail and waterways, we are carrying an ever-increasing load of goods by road—the figure is three times that of rail—with all the attendant environmental consequences? Incentives to encourage the


carriage of goods by rail will not only help the environment but will do away with the need for ever-increasing expenditure on more roads.

Mr. Griffiths: I assure the hon. Gentleman that proper account of environmental considerations is now taken in approving all new road schemes. It is no part of my right hon. Friend's policy artificially to interfere between a customer and his choice of the best mode of transport, bearing in mind speed, reliability and cost.

Mr. Tebbit: Would my hon. Friend say whether he read this Question as a conversion to the Treaty of Rome on the part of the hon. Member for Watford (Mr. Raphael Tuck)?

Mr. Griffiths: The hon. Gentleman can speak for himself.

British Road Services (General Haulage Section)

Mr. Skeet: asked the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will give a general direction to British Transport Holdings gradually to reduce and phase out the general haulage section of British Road Services.

Mr. Peter Walker: No, Sir.

Mr. Skeet: The Minister will realise that the private firm does this job much more economically than the State. Would not this make a very distinctive contribution to the reduction of costs which the Government seek? Would my right hon. Friend look into the problem of the long-distance haulier and remove the restrictions applying under the 1968 Transport Act?

Mr. Walker: On the latter point, we have announced that we intend completely to do away with any form of quantity licensing. On the former point, I am satisfied that the new chairman appointed at the beginning of the year will see that this undertaking is carried out on a sound financial basis.

Mr. Walter Johnson: Is the Minister aware that these loaded and inspired Questions attacking the Transport Holding Company are causing a gasp of dismay and uncertainty in the minds of both management and staff? Is he further aware that the staffs of British Road

Services, National Carriers and Freight-liners are doing their utmost to make a success of their business and that this continued attack is having a demoralising effect upon everybody?

Mr. Walker: I should have thought that the hon. Gentleman should have been satisfied, therefore, by my clear remarks. The answer to the Question was "No, Sir", and I followed that by stating my confidence in the chairman.

Sports Council

Mr. Dalyell: asked the Secretary of State for the Environment when he hopes to make a statement on the future of the Sports Council.

Mr. Eldon Griffiths: I would refer the hon. Member to the answer given on 10th June to my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Mr. Charles Morrison).—[Vol. 818, c. 365–7.]

Mr. Dalyell: Are the Government aware that some of us, sitting in Room 10 on the Committee stage of a Bill and listening to these dobs being given to surtax payers, think that some of the cash should be given to the Sports Council for a sports building programme, which would take up some of the employment in the country?

Mr. Griffiths: It is, perhaps, characteristic of the hon. Gentleman that when the Government have raised the status, increased the power and widened the responsibilities of the Sports Council, and given it a good deal more money, he should welcome it in that intemperate fashion.

Mr. Money: May I tell my hon. Friend how welcome is the Sports Council that he has set up, especially in East Anglia, where this sort of facility is so much needed?

Mr. Griffiths: I am obliged to my hon. Friend.

Mr. Denis Howell: Has the Minister consulted the C.C.P.R. and all the governing bodies of sport? If so, would he say what they advised? Have they advised against the policy changes now being implemented? If so, why was this announcement of very important policy change given by means of a Written


Answer and not a statement? I welcome the appointment of Dr. Bannister to his new position, but would the Minister say how much time Dr. Bannister will be able to give to the new position and the salary which he will be paid?

Mr. Griffiths: On the first part of the hon. Gentleman's question, I saw all concerned and took into account fully, as did my right hon. Friend, the representations made. I have since seen representatives of the C.C.P.R. and governing bodies of sports, and they have welcomed the Government's decisions. On the Written Answer, there was that day an Oral Question in another place and I thought it right that the House should not hear any later than the other place what the Government intended.
On the hon. Gentleman's final point, I have every confidence that Dr. Bannister will lead this Council well. His term of appointment will be for five years and his remuneration will be at a level not less than that of other chairmen of comparable bodies.

Car Safety Standards

Mr. Edelman: asked the Secretary of State for the Environment what advice he has given to the British motor industry in connection with improving the safety standards of British cars, following certain proposals made by Mr. Ralph Nader, a copy of which is in his possession.

Mr. Peter Walker: Safety standards in Britain are dealt with in the Construction and Use Regulations. Standards for exported cars are a matter for the authorities of the importing country.

Mr. Edelman: Could the right hon. Gentleman now repudiate the dismissive attitude of his right hon. Friend towards Mr. Nader's proposals, as thanks to Mr.

Nader's persistence the number of deaths in the United States per 100,000 vehicle miles fell last year to a record low of 4·9 compared with 5·6 in the United Kingdom? In those circumstances, will not the right hon. Gentleman now give careful consideration to Mr. Nader's proposals for improving the safety of British cars and investigate the question whether there are double standards, in terms of safety, for British cars made for export and those made for the domestic market?

Mr. Walker: The hon. Gentleman is almost suggesting that we should automatically follow whatever any other country lays down as a safety regulation. I disagree with that, as did the previous Government. We have never been in line with all other countries in imposing safety regulations. On the figures, the death rate per hundred million vehicle miles for people in cars in the United States is 4 as compared with 2·8 here. On this basis we can claim that in certain spheres we have higher safety standards. But I am anxious to examine, as is my right hon. Friend, any sensible suggestion for improving safety in cars, and as soon as it is approved we should be only too anxious to implement it.

Mr. J. H. Osborn: Is there not an urgent need to improve the safety of vehicles and to obtain much better agreement internationally, especially within Europe, as to what those standards should be?

Mr. Walker: We are already discussing this question in Europe. I am this year introducing new regulations bringing in a number of new safety features for British cars. I am very anxious to examine any possible method of improving safety in cars. There is no dragging of feet.

Orders of the Day — IMMIGRATION BILL

As amended (in the Standing Committee), further considered.

Clause 2

STATEMENT OF RIGHT OF ABODE, AND RELATED AMENDMENTS AS TO CITIZENSHIP BY REGISTRATION

3.30 p.m.

The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Reginald Maudling): I beg to move Amendment No. 3, in page 2, line 14, leave out from 'has' to 'that' in line 15.

Mr. Speaker: I think it will be for the convenience of the House to discuss with this Amendment Government Amendments Nos. 4, 6 and 8; Amendment No. 108, in page 2, line 26, leave out from 'above' to end of line 29; Government Amendment No. 10; and Amendment No. 71, in page 28, line 45, at end insert:
'child' in relation to a person of illegitimate birth means, where the Secretary of State certifies that he is satisfied of such relationship, the child of his mother and of his putative father and 'parent', 'grandchild' and 'grandparent' shall be construed accordingly.

Mr. Maudling: The purpose of the group of Amendments standing in my name is to fulfil certain undertaking I gave in Committee. The effect of the Amendments will be threefold, referring to the circumstance where patriality is acquired by descent.
The first point is to provide that, where patriality is acquired by descent, it will be so only where the parent or grandparent concerned at the time of the birth or adoption of the claimant held citizenship of the United Kingdom and Colonies. The second and ancillary point is that, where a child is born after the death of his father, it shall suffice for the purposes of partiality that the father was a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies at death. The third point is that patriality shall descend to or through an illegitimate child from his mother but not from his father.
These were matters that arose in Committee. My right hon. Friend the Member

for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell) asked whether it was right that patriality should descend from a parent who had renounced or lost his United Kingdom citizenship. I agree with my right hon. Friend to a considerable extent, but not to the full extent. If before the birth of the child citizenship had been renounced, clearly patriality should not lie. If citizenship was lost after the birth of the child, it would seem wrong retrospectively to take away from the child citizenship which it had acquired at the time of its birth.
Therefore, the test of these Amendments as to acquiring patriality by descent is the holding of United Kingdom citizenship by the parent at the time of the birth of the child.
The third point was as regards illegitimate children. The Bill as originally drafted provided that the rights of patriality should descend only through legitimate descent which, on the face of it, was a reasonable provision, because where there is a legal right it should probably be derived from some legal relationship.
I was persuaded by the arguments in Committee that an Amendment should be made. Therefore, we are providing that patriality can derive in the case of an illegitimate child from the mother. I do not think that it is practicable to extend this to the father. In sheer practical terms, as was said in Committee, it is perfectly simple to prove the birth from a mother because of the birth certificate. However, in the case of the father of an illegitimate child it would be exceedingly difficult to do this in practice; and as in the vast majority of cases custody of an illegitimate child rests with the mother I believe that what we are doing will meet this problem.
I was grateful for the advice of the Committee in these matters. I hope the House will accept the Amendments which have been put forward in that spirit.

Mr. Peter Archer: Our real complaint about these Amendments is with the situation which has given rise to them. That may be small comfort to the Secretary of State, as it is a situation of his own making.
Traditionally, immigration law when it is at its most rational should take


account of two categories—those who are citizens or nationals—that is, those who belong to the community, those who are entitled to the protection of the Government, those who owe allegiance, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, aliens.
The Bill seeks to make a different distinction between those who, apparently on quite different grounds, are thought to be entitled to call the United Kingdom their home and those who are not. So the Government have had to introduce this odious concept of patriality. Then there are these hair-splitting distinctions which these Amendments are about.
Why is not the right to live here co-terminus with citizenship? The answer presumably lies in our history. As I said in Committee, our grandfathers asserted a right to reside in other people's countries without producing work permits or certificates of patriality; and in consequence the history of those countries and their present-day situation are very much intertwined with our own.
That is why the British Nationality Act, 1948, had to define British nationality as something other than United Kingdom citizenship. What is required at this stage, as my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, South (Mr. Merlyn Rees) said in Committee, is a Bill to sort out the resulting anomalies in our citizenship law. Then there would be no need for the subtleties and perplexities involved in the concept of patriality and no need for the kind of hair-splitting entailed in the Amendments.
However, this is how the Government have chosen to tackle the problem, so we must examine the Amendments which are proposed. Granted the scheme of this Bill, we have no quarrel with Amendments Nos. 3, 4, 6 and 10. We are much less happy about Amendment No. 8. The necessity for this Amendment arises, as the Secretary of State has said, from a discussion in Committee when one hon. Member on the Government side moved to leave out illegitimate children from those enjoying the benefits of patriality.
I do not need to repeat the details of that dismal debate, but the Committee was shattered to hear that in the Government's view the Amendment was unnecessary because already the word "children" in the Bill excluded illegitimate children. So the misfortune with which they were

already visited was to deprive them, over and above all else, of the opportunity of asserting patriality.
My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Dulwich (Mr. S. C. Silkin) and myself took leave to doubt whether the meaning was so unambiguous as the Government asserted. We went on to say that, if it was, the sooner the Bill was amended the better. We sought to introduce an appropriate Amendment in Committee to Clause 33, the definition section. In that debate the Under-Secretary undertook to examine whether this Amendment might be made. As the Secretary of State has just told the House, Amendment No. 8 results from that consideration.
We are grateful for the concession so far as it goes, but, as the Home Secretary has just said, it still seeks to restrict the relationship of an illegitimate child to its mother. We still wonder why an illegitimate child is not related to its father. This is the purpose of our Amendment No. 71. It was said in Committee, as a reason for not extending the concept to include a relationship with the father, that in many countries from where immigrants come there is not any readily available documentation so that it is not easy to prove this kind of relationship.
In so far as that is the problem, one would have thought that the kind of relationship which it would be difficult to establish would be that of marriage. So this would appear to be a reason, if it is right, for not distinguishing between legitimate and illegitimate children.
We do not see it as a problem at all, because the burden of proving patriality is upon the applicant. If he fails to prove it, no one complains. That he will find it difficult to prove it seems to me a poor reason to deprive him of the prospect of proving it at all, to say that one will not even listen to him when he seeks to prove it.
The other argument put forward in Committee was that an applicant is more likely to have an upbringing and cultural affinity with his mother's people than with his father's. I am not sure that that is always true, but, if it is, it must apply equally forcefully to a legitimate child. The distinction on which would be entailed here is not between children whose parents are married and


those whose parents are not but between children whose parents live together and those whose parents do not. We find that the reasons which have been asserted for this odious distinction are completely unconvincing when we give them a moment's thought.
The whole law has moved towards a recognition of real relationships in the course of this century, away from persecution of the innocent and towards compassion. We are left wondering whether there is any reason why it is necessary to be less compassionate in the Bill.
It may be that at the end of the debate the Opposition will not divide the House on the matter. The Government have made a move towards what we asked, and we are duly grateful. It is half a loaf. But it seems a pity to arouse so much disappointment and so many misunderstandings in the future for the sake of the other half.

Mr. J. Enoch Powell: The Clause, as it will be amended if the House accepts the Amendments of my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, is a considerable improvement on the Clause as it first met the eyes of the House on First Reading. This is partly attributable to the activities of the Standing Committee, but I think it right to recognise that the response of my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary to a number of points put to him in Committee has also contributed.
On the two points with which this group of Amendments deals, my right hon. Friend, although his decision is in the nature of a compromise, has probably hit off the best compromise available. He recognises—and I am obliged to him for doing so—that it was unreasonable that the citizenship of the parent at any time, irrespective of what happened after that time, should determine the patriality of the child and in some cases of the grandchild. He has probably made the right compromise by saying that it should be the nationality or status at the time of the relevant birth.
Of course, we can envisage circumstances in which the parent's decision to change his nationality in effect carries

with it the nationality of the child, but if we are to have general law—and we must have—then I do not think that it would be proper for the Secretary of State to be in the position of looking into individual cases. I therefore accept my right hon. Friend's definition of the relevant time as the best available.
I think that the same applies to my right hon. Friend's response to the debate in Committee upon the question of illegitimate descent. This has been emphasised by the Amendment which the Opposition have tabled to which the hon. and learned Member for Rowley Regis and Tipton (Mr. Peter Archer) has just referred. If we were to go further than my right hon. Friend has gone, we should bring in a discretion in the matter of paternity which would have to be exercised by the Secretary of State in every individual case. I do not think that it would be regarded as appropriate that within the ambit of an immigration or citizenship Act that jurisdiction should devolve on the Home Secretary.
My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Mrs. Knight), owing to duties elsewhere, is not here today. We were indebted to her in Committee for ensuring that the whole question of legitimacy and illegitimacy in this context was ventilated. I cannot speak for my hon. Friend, but I believe that my right hon. Friend has met the general feeling of the Committee up to the point of practicability, and that the essential compromise which his Amendments offer is the right one.
I have no intention of raising again the issue of immigration law versus citizenship law, which has been necessarily so persistent a feature of our debates, and which was touched upon by the hon. and learned Gentleman. Until we have a citizenship of the United Kingdom, which this country has not hitherto known but with which sooner or later we must provide ourselves, we shall be driven to the relatively unsatisfactory expedients embodied in the Clause. But I do not think that that matter of principle can be pursued further upon these Amendments. I welcome them, such as they are.

Amendment agreed to.

Further Amendment made: No. 4, in page 2, line 17, at end insert:
(b) he is a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies born to or legally adopted by a parent who had that citizenship at the time of the birth or adoption, and the parent either—

(i) then had that citizenship by his birth, adoption, naturalisation or registration in the United Kingdom or in any of the Islands; or
(ii) had been born to or legally adopted by a parent who at the time of that birth or adoption so had it; or—[Mr. Maudling.]

3.45 p.m.

Mr. S. C. Silkin: I beg to move Amendment No. 5, in page 2, line 19, leave out from 'been' to second 'or' in line 21 and insert:
'ordinarily resident in the United Kingdom and Islands for a continuous period of five years or more and is settled therein; ',

Mr. Speaker: I understand that it will be for the convenience of the House also to take Amendment No. 7, in page 2, line 25, at end insert:
'; or
(d) she has at any time been ordinarily resident in the United Kingdom and Islands for a continuous period of five years or more and is or during any part of such period has been the wife of a person having the right of abode in the United Kingdom'.
and Amendment No. 105, in page 2, line 22, leave out 'a Commonwealth citizen' and insert:
'not a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies'.

Mr. Silkin: Amendments Nos. 5 and 7, tabled by my right hon. and hon. Friends and myself, are intended to broaden and liberalise the rights of people admitted to this country in future to come and go as they please. Under the existing legislation, a Commonwealth citizen, once here, has, broadly speaking, the right to stay. That is the general position, subject to qualifications. For those who are already here or will be here in July of this year, the Bill recognises that vested right, and, again subject to qualifications, does not remove it. But those entering in the future will have no such automatic right under the Bill. They will come here on probation, as it were, by virtue of the patriality concept. That concept is widely disliked, particularly amongst those who are concerned with community relations.
It is therefore our duty to scrutinise the rules with care and to ensure that

they are not more restrictive than is essential. We have excellent authority for that approach, because the Home Secretary at the very outset of his speech on Second Reading said:
… as a matter of general principle I believe that the most important problem that any Government have to face in this whole context is the problem of community relations, and that the question of immigration policy in a sense is secondary or ancillary to that basic problem.
We entirely agree with that. On Second Reading the House certainly accepted that general principle.
The Government used their majority, that dwindling asset, to force the concept of patriality through the House. But that concept has already been eroded in Committee and we note that the Government have felt constrained to accept that erosion, although in which direction they are looking over their shoulders we are not altogether sure.
We believe that the Bill will not ease but will exacerbate the problem of community relations. Our Amendments are intended not to cure—because we cannot do that—but to mitigate that exacerbation. When the Bill was published, I think that it was generally thought that Commonwealth citizens coming here in the future—

The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. Richard Sharples): I apologise for interrupting the hon. and learned Gentleman at this early stage, but I think that he is discussing Amendments Nos. 5 and 7. Amendment No. 5 refers to subsection (1)(b), concerning citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies, not Commonwealth citizens.

Mr. Silkin: I am much obliged to the hon. Gentleman. I am aware of that. I shall be coming to the concept of the Amendments in a moment.
I was saying that it was generally believed that Commonwealth citizens coming here in the future would earn the right to come and go as they wished by five years' residence here. The right hon. Gentleman, no doubt unintentionally, encouraged that belief by an observation he made on Second Reading, when he said:
For example, those who come here as Commonwealth citizens and who are free of conditions after five years are free to remain here unconditionally."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 8th March, 1971; Vol. 813, c. 42–51.]


Whatever the meaning of that may have been, what emerged in Committee was that what the Government intend is that five years' residence here will not be enough, that there must be five years' unconditional residence here before a person has the freedom to remain here unconditionally. It is a rather curious phraseology, as the Bill now stands, that the freedom to live in this country without let or hindrance, which is referred to in Clause 1, is not achieved by a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies under Clause 2(1)(b) which, as the Minis-ster of State rightly says, we are discussing, until for a continuous period of five years he has been ordinarily resident here without, to quote from subsection (2)(c)
being subject … to any restriction on the period for which he may remain.
We might have supposed that if a United Kingdom citizen was ordinarily resident here without being subject to any restrictions on the period of his remaining, that in itself would involve the freedom to live here without let or hindrance. But the tortuous concept of patriality has destroyed the meaning of words. The right hon. Gentleman, by later Amendments, proposes to alter some of those words, but as far as I can tell the effect remains the same from this point of view. Since we were told in Committee that the period of restriction will normally be the first four years of residence, and that only after that will the immigrant begin his unrestricted stay, a citizen of this country will normally not enjoy the right of freedom to live here and to come and go as he pleases until he has lived here not for five years, as we imagined, but for at least nine years.
That, we believe, is contrary to what was widely understood and to what the right hon. Gentleman at any rate appeared to have been saying—he may not have meant it—and is certainly unnecessarily restrictive. Five years should surely be ample time to enable us to decide whether one of our own fellow citizens who has joined us here has settled as one of us.
The effect of Amendment No. 5 would be that if after five years of ordinary residence here such a person is here free from restriction, that freedom from restriction would become a reality by the

grant to him of the right of abode. We do not accept that this new concept of patriality is a necessary or desirable erosion of citizenship. But, if we must have it, we have no doubt that our Amendment will mitigate its harshness and will enable those who come to settle among us to do so with an easier mind than the Bill permits.
Amendment No. 7 has a similar object concerning the rights of wives. Our nationality laws give the wives of citizens automatic citizenship. But under the Bill the wife of a patrial is not automatically a patrial. Her husband may have or acquire the right to remain here freely, and yet she may not. One of the consequences of patriality which arose again and again in Committee—and which my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rowley Regis and Tipton (Mr. Peter Archer) graphically illustrated last night on new Clause No. 4, when he talked about the hijacker who is patrial and the hijacker who is not—is that a family may be hopelessly split between patriais and non-patrials with results which are not merely illogical but often cause hardship.
Amendment No. 7 does not deal with all those cases, but it seeks to deal with the case of a wife in as near as possible a way which assimilates her position in patriality with her position in citizenship. In other words, it seeks as nearly as reasonably practicable to place her on terms of equality with her husband. It stops short of giving the automatic patriality which would entirely follow the citizenship principle, because that would create fresh anomalies which we seek to avoid. For that reason, we have proposed a period of five years ordinary residence here as a qualification for the wife just as we have done in Amendment No. 5. Amendment No. 7 would go some way towards avoiding the splitting of families which the Prime Minister condemned in the General Election campaign and which we know from experience produces unhappiness, the breakdown of marriages and delinquency.
I commend both Amendments to the House.

Mr. Sharples: Amendment No. 5 refers to people covered by Clause 2(1)(b)—citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies. The vast majority of them are already


covered, such as United Kingdom passport holders with work permits coming from East Africa who are admitted free of conditions from the outset and who, when they have been here for five years, acquire the right of patriality. The Commonwealth citizen who comes here with a work permit is able to count the first four years since he arrived and then the additional one year towards the acquisition of patriality. Therefore, the number of people covered by the Amendment is comparatively small. It consists, in the main, of citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies with a work permit coming here from the dependent territories.
4.0 p.m.
There is some force in the arguments of the hon. and learned Member for Dul-wich (Mr. S. C. Silkin). There are, however, considerable drafting difficulties and I should not like to under-estimate them. I cannot recommend the House to accept his Amendment. However, with my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, I will give it careful consideration and, if possible, within the limitations of drafting, see whether we can meet the point when the Bill is considered in another place.
Amendment No. 7 also affects a very small number of people. In the great majority of cases, the husband of a woman married to a person having the right of abode will be a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies and in such circumstances, under Section 6(2) of the British Nationality Act, 1948, the wife has an absolute right to be registered as a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies and so to acquire patriality and a right of abode. She is able to exercise this right to be registered even if her marriage has been dissolved or has come to an end in some other way since the entitlement under Section 6(2) of the 1948 Act applies when a woman "has been married to a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies".
Accordingly, in the great majority of cases, Section 6(2), which is not to be amended by the Bill, already provides the solution aimed at by the Amendment. The only people affected who are not already provided for are the wives of men, being Commonwealth citizens, with a father or mother born in the United Kingdom, who acquire their patriality under Clause 2(1)(c). But even here the

number concerned is extremely few. If the husband's father was born in the United Kingdom, the husband will be a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies and so his wife will have an automatic right to register unless that citizenship was renounced.
Therefore, the only people affected are wives of men whose mothers, but not whose fathers, were born in the United Kingdom and who are not therefore citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies unless and until they acquire citizenship by registration. The wife of such a person would not become a patrial notwithstanding the fact that her husband was a patrial. The effect of the Amendment would be to give a very limited class of people patriality.
I have carefully considered the point since the Amendment was tabled. Although the numbers concerned are very few, there is some force in the hon. and learned Gentleman's argument. I have had very little time to consider the matter, and I cannot give an absolute assurance, but, again with my right hon. Friend, I should like to consider it to see whether the point can be met by an Amendment introduced in another place. I shall do my best.

Mr. James Callaghan: We are grateful to the Minister of State for the way in which he has answered the arguments of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Dulwich (Mr. S. C. Silkin). The House is indebted to my hon. and learned Friend's vigilance in discovering this extremely technical point. It is a small point, but it throws out the balance of the Bill. Given the principles upon which the Bill is based, it would have meant that a group of people would have been outside the normal range of those principles. In the light of what the Minister of State has said, I would not advise my hon. Friends to press the Amendment, although we intended to do so if we had had the rather dusty answer which we anticipated.
I should like the Minister to give an assurance, because I did not follow the last part of his reply. He read it very well, but it did not penetrate. If he can deal with the two groups covered by Amendments Nos. 5 and 7, will there be any small groups left outside the general principle upon which the Bill is based,


namely, that, once the conditions have been removed, the period during which the conditions were in operation will apply towards the five-year requirement for permanent settlement before registration can be secured? In other words, are there any other pockets of people which even the vigilance and eagle eye of my hon. and learned Friend has not been able to spot? If so, and if they are of the numbers indicated by the Minister, we would ask for his guidance. If there were any, we would hope that he would deal with them. If there were not, we would not need to pursue the point. I hope that I have given the Minister sufficient time to give an authoritative answer.

Mr. Sharples: May I say, with leave, that so far as I have been able to discover in the time I can give the right hon. Member for Cardiff, South-East (Mr. Callaghan) the assurance for which he asks. I think that we have covered all the points.

Mr. Raymond Gower: I wish to comment on the second part of the reply of my hon. Friend the Minister of State. I am sure that he will not be deterred from trying to find the right form of words by the fact that so few women are involved. In cases like this, not merely hardship but anguish could result if a defect in drafting should prevent a solution from being discovered.

Mr. David Steel: I had hoped that the Minister of State would refer to my Amendment No. 106. In Committee, I moved a similar Amendment which has been reworded in the hope of making it narrower and acceptable to the Government. Its object is to try to ensure the maintenance of family unity. If a woman has a right of abode here, her husband should have a similar right. Would the Minister comment on that point?

Mr. Sharples: If I may have leave to speak for the third time, I could not advise the House to accept Amendment No. 106. Its effect would be to give a right of abode to the husbands of women who are patrial. It would open the door to enormous abuse. The House has never accepted the principle that people should acquire patriality or rights of abode in this way. I must advise the House to reject the Amendment.

Mr. S. C. Silkin: In view of the undertaking of the Minister of State, and on the understanding that he will ensure that no small pockets of people are left outside the ambit of the concession which, I take it, he will arrange to be embodied in an Amendment in another place, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Mr. David Steel: I beg to move Amendment No. 105, in page 2, line 22, leave out "a Commonwealth citizen" and insert:
not a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies".

Mr. Speaker: It would be convenient if we discuss with this Amendment No. 123 leave out paragraph (c).

Mr. Steel: The question of the rights of entry and abode in this country through descent is a complicated one and I would remind the House of the present situation and how we arrive at it. A person has always held the right to enter this country and to stay here if his father was born here. In other words, the person abroad whose father had perhaps moved abroad, held dual citizenship—the citizenship of the country where he was born and also the citizenship of this country through his father.
In 1968 at the time of our difficulties with the Kenya-Asian population, when the Commonwealth Immigrants Bill was brought in by the previous Government, they proposed a limitation on the free entry of United Kingdom citizens to this country, limiting it to those whose father or grandfather had been born here as well as those who were born here. During the passage of the Bill through this House an Amendment was proposed by myself and the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Sir Robin Turton) to amend the Bill and give the right to enter this country by descent not only from the father and grandfather but also from the mother or grandmother. The Government of the day accepted that Amendment. Therefore in 1968, when the Measure became law the control for the entry of United Kingdom citizens exempted those who were the child or grandchild of a person born in this country. When their Bill was published the Government proposed to apply the


same principle—the "grandparental qualification"—to Commonwealth citizens and the Bill as originally drafted and approved on Second Reading contained the qualification in Clause 2(1)(c) that a Commonwealth citizen would have the right of abode in this country if he was the child or the grandchild of a person who had United Kingdom citizenship by birth in this country.
In Committee we removed the grand-parental qualification and the words "or grandchild" were deleted. So the Bill as reported to the House, and as it now stands, simply reads that a person may have a right of abode if he is a Commonwealth citizen and as the child of a person having had United Kingdom citizenship.
The Government have apparently accepted the verdict of the Committee and no attempt is to be made to reinstate the grandchild qualification. We have reached a situation where, if a person is a Commonwealth citizen, he may enter this country and have a right of abode here by virtue of tracing his descent from either his father or his mother. If he is not a Commonwealth citizen he can only enter this country and have a right of abode by virtue of his descent from his father. I do not know whether that is a distinction which the Government intend to maintain or whether it is a purely artificial one which has arisen as a result of the Amendment in Committee and been left in the Bill. The purpose of my Amendment is to find out whether this is so.
If the Government did not intend to maintain such a distinction—a marginal and illogical distinction—this Amendment provides the opportunity for the House to put it right simply by saying that if a person holds any other citizenship he may have the right of abode in this country by virtue of being the child of a United Kingdom citizen. If, on the other hand, the Government intend to maintain this distinction I invite them to consider whether they would be right to do so.
The Bill, if passed into law in its present form, would result in a ludicrous and unjustifiable anomaly. If a person's mother who had been born in this country and was a United Kingdom citizen chose to go and live in say Tanzania, then

under the Bill that person would have the right of abode. If on the other hand his mother, having been born here, decided to go and live in France—and this would apply even if we become associated with France through the Common Market—he would not qualify for a right of abode in this country. If he had been born in France, he would be an alien and not qualify under Clause 2(1)(c). The anomaly is further aggravated if we go back to the example I gave a moment ago. Supposing the mother had been born in Tanzania and political steps were taken by the Government of Tanzania to leave the Commonwealth and I mean this in no political sense, it is merely a random choice—

Mr. Alexander W. Lyon: As in the case of South Africa, for instance?

Mr. Steel: Yes, indeed. South Africa would be a case in point, if the position were antedated. If a country chose to leave the Commonwealth that person's right of abode would be removed not by any action of this Government, but by the action of a foreign Government if he was depending on his mother's connection with this country for entry. This is a nonsense and this House, having accepted in 1968 the principle of equality of descent between father and mother and grandfather and grandmother ought to clear up this matter and decide whether we accept that a person should be able to claim descent and right of abode through the descent from the mother or the father. That is the purpose of my Amendment and I hope that it will be acceptable to the Government.

4.15 p.m.

Mr. Alexander W. Lyon: My Amendment No. 123, raises a much wider issue of patriality. I see from the observations this afternoon that there appears to be tacit agreement between both sides that the matter should not be raised at length on Report. I find this regrettable because it prevents those of us who were not in the Committee and could not get into the Second Reading debate from discussing the question.

Mr. Arthur Lewis: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Am I not right in saying that you decide what can and what cannot be said, whatever the Front Benches may or may not have decided and my hon. Friend can


raise what he wishes, subject to your ruling?

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Member is quite correct.

Mr. Callaghan: As we are getting a mountain of superstructure built on a very inadequate hypothesis, let me say that there is no tacit agreement, expressed, implied or in any other sense about any discussions.

Mr. Lyon: The position about patriality was raised by two Amendments which I tabled. One of these would have limited the right of abode completely to citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies and that has not been called. This Amendment would cut out Clause 2(1)(c), namely, that part of the patrial section which allows right of abode to those who claim it by descent as Commonwealth citizens from their parents.
The descent from grandparents, as the hon. Member for Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles (Mr. David Steel) pointed out, was cut out in Committee. I have read the speech of the Home Secretary in Committee in the course of the discussion of a similar Amendment in which he indicated how, in his view, the scope of the subsection, particularly as amended, was very restricted. It seems to have been accepted by the rest of the Committee after his intervention that the right of a child to enter this country where the father was born in this country is in any case unlimited and always has been unlimited under any legislation. If the Clause as now amended widens the situation at all, it simply widens it to the children of mothers who were United Kingdom citizens. Therefore, this is a very limited extension.
I said I would try to keep my speech short and not widen the debate. What really concerned me was the effect of the 1968 Act, and, for reasons which are completely different from those of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wolverhampton, South - West (Mr. Powell), I took the view that if we were to introduce at this stage a new law of immigration it was appropriate that we should deal with it in terms of citizenship and not in terms of belonging and for that reason I wanted to create what would be a completely new type of

citizenship restricted only to citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies.
I wanted to do so out of compassion for both the present Home Secretary and my right hon. Friend the former Home Secretary, becuse no one in the discussions in the Committee, so far as I can see, raised the question of what will happen if the case pending before the European Commission on Human Rights goes against this country, and whether, if the matter which has in that case been raised, namely, whether the 1968 Act violates the Convention on Human Rights and is, therefore, illegal under the Convention, that will mean that there will have to be an amendment of this legislation in order to repeal the 1968 Act. If that is so, clearly it is a work of supererogation to pass this legislation in its present form, and there will have to be wider legislation to grant right of abode to all citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies with passports. For that reason, therefore, the widening would also include this extension which is contained in Clause 2(1)(c) even if it is as limited as the Home Secretary has suggested. It is for that reason that I raise this matter now in order that we can have a statement from the Government about what is their attitude towards this case pending before the Commission.
If I am right, the application means that this legislation we are proposing is a continuation of the violation of the Convention which was perpetrated by the 1968 Act, and if therefore that has to be amended, we shall have to go back to square one in any case, but we shall have to go back to square one having also widened the right of certain Commonwealth citizens by this Clause 2(1)(c). They would then have rights of entry which could not be taken away, because that would be a violation of the European Convention. It seems to me that we are in real danger of perpetrating another situation such as occurred in relation to the 1948 Act. We are going to give to certain people rights which, by reason of the European Convention, we shall not be able to take away, and then we shall And that the 1968 Act has to be repealed and this legislation completely altered, and in that situation we shall find that, instead of limiting—which was the original intention of the legislation—we shall have widened, whether slightly or wider than


slightly, the ambit of those who are eligible to come in. It is for that reason that I raise this question despite the assurances of the Home Secretary that Clause 2(1)(c) has a very narrow ambit.
I would briefly raise the point about patriality which does really concern me. Throughout, there has been the assumption that belonging has something to do with physical ties of family, or part of the family, with whether one of one's ancestors was born in this country. I would suggest—and it is a matter on which we shall agree to differ—that the real concept of belonging is the kind of feelings in the hearts and minds of those who wish to be regarded as citizens of this country, who have consciously continued to accept rights as United Kingdom citizens or, even more consciously, have taken on the rights by registration or naturalisation. In those circumstances a person belongs to this country in a way which someone who is merely the child or grandchild of someone who was born in this country earlier in our history does not. This is a much nearer belonging than that which someone in the light of the birth of one of his ancestors claims.
In a number of international conferences in recent months when I have met people from Australia or New Zealand I have put to them this idea that because their fathers or grandfathers were born in this country they somehow belonged to the United Kingdom. They found this totally implausible. Yet we are cutting out by the 1968 legislation and to some extent by this legislation people who want to belong to this country, who conceive it as their mother country, who want to come here because we have this very old-fashioned concept of who does and who does not belong.
It is for that reason I should like either that we should keep to the old concept of British nationality, which was part of the Commonwealth tradition and which has gradually been whittled away, or that we should start out afresh with a concept of British citizenship which depends upon either birth here and continuation of allegiance to this country or conscious acceptance of some connection with this country acquired by birth or registration or naturalisation.

For that reason I would share much of the thinking of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West, though, as I said, for entirely different reasons, but it is because of that concern that I have come to the conclusion that we ought to raise this matter yet again on this Clause in order that we shall see that we do not perpetrate another mistake which would take us before the European Convention on Human Rights.

Mr. Sharples: I refer first to the remarks of the hon. Member for York (Mr. Alexander W. Lyon). I think very few of us would disagree with him that it is the person who is naturalised here, who is registered here, who has acquired his citizenship in the normal way most of us have, who lives here, who has the prior claim in this matter, but when one comes to define these elements to which he referred I am sure he will appreciate the difficulty of drafting them in law.
I turn to the point he raised about the case before the European Human Rights Commission. Of course that case may be decided one way or another, but it is our contention that there has been no violation of the Convention; we have committed no violation of it at all and it is our intention that the case should be defended. Of course, laws can be found to need alteration in the light of decisions of the courts. This is something which happens all the time. As our contention is that there has been no violation, we see no reason why the Commission should come to a decision contrary to our views.
4.30 p.m.
The hon. Gentleman rightly said that the number of people now affected by Clause 2(1)(c) is very small. They are those citizens of the Commonwealth whose mothers were born in this country. Those whose fathers were born here, whether or not they are Commonwealth citizens, have the right of patriality.
The hon. Member for Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles (Mr. David Steel) asked whether it was intentional that there should be discrimination in favour of Commonwealth citizens. The answer is a clear "Yes". It is the Government's intention that there should be a discrimination in favour of the Commonwealth, and that those people whose mothers are


Commonwealth citizens should have this additional right. The effect of Amendment No. 105 would be to extend the right of abode to anyone, including aliens, whose father or mother was born here. We do not believe that is right. There would be a considerable number of such people who, in the main, would be living in the United States, Continental Europe and South Africa. We do not believe it is right that this privilege should be extended to people living outside the Commonwealth deriving their patriality through their mothers.
There is always the problem, when a country decides to leave the Commonwealth, that the rights of certain people deriving patriality in this way will be abrogated. It is one of the considerations which any country has to bear in mind in deciding whether or not to remain a member of the Commonwealth. I advise the House to reject the Amendment.

Mr. Callaghan: I should like to put one question to the Minister which has occurred to me only since the hon. Member for Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles (Mr. David Steel) raised this point. In my constituency, in 1954, there were a number of people who were related to people in Somalia, which became a republic. My recollection is that people living in Somalia, because it became a republic, lost their close affinity and their right to enter this country, and I had difficult correspondence with the Foreign Office about this.
The Minister says that it is for the country concerned to take this into account when it is deciding whether or not to become a republic, but the individual citizen is frequently not in a position to influence the decision. At that time a number of citizens of Somalia were desperately anxious about this. In the words of my hon. Friend the Member for York (Mr. Alexander W. Lyon) they felt they belonged because they had direct connections either through service in the Royal Navy or in some other way, and they wanted to keep this arrangement, but our laws did not permit them to do so.
Will the Minister consider the possibility of giving to citizens of a Commonwealth country that decides to become independent—and we should have to invent a way of doing it—the

same privileges as they would have under Clause 2(1)(c) as drafted? These are people who may not be able to influence their own Government in reaching a decision on independence, which may be taken on much wider considerations, yet who nevertheless feel that they would like to retain the connection.
I do not expect the Minister to give an affirmative answer straight away, but will he consider the point between now and when the Bill goes to the other place?

Mr. Powell: Before my hon. Friend responds, I think he will find when he looks into this that, if not invariably, at least in many cases where a country has left the allegiance, as it used to be, pro vision has been made for those who wish to retain their allegiance and not be carried into alienhood to do so by an overt act—

Mr. Callaghan: Not invariably.

Mr. Powell: Not invariably, but there are precedents for this and it is something for which the House has often wished to provide.

Mr. Sharples: With the leave of the House—one certainly has sympathy with the view expressed by the right hon. Member for Cardiff, South-East (Mr. Callaghan), but I should not like him or the House to be under any illusion about the difficulties of what he is suggesting, certainly in respect of Clause 2(1)(c). The Clause confers a privilege on a very limited number of people simply on the grounds that they happen to be citizens of the Commonwealth and derive their patriality through their mothers. So long as that privilege is derived from citizenship of a Commonwealth country, it would be extremely difficult to devise a scheme which would safeguard that privilege when that citizenship ceases. I will certainly look at the point, but I should be deceiving the House and the right hon. Gentleman if I suggested that there was much possibility of a solution.

Mr. Merlyn Rees: I rise in a genuine attempt to seek knowledge. My hon. Friend the Member for York (Mr. Alexander W. Lyon) and I ate and slept with citizenship for what seemed like 40 days and 40 nights. The reason why we seem to be unable to deal with this matter now is that we have exhausted the subject.
The Minister is at liberty to agree on this point with his right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell), and I would rather he agreed with the right hon. Gentleman than with me on the technical points. But I feel that even the right hon. Gentleman, with his great knowledge, had it wrong. We all learned in Committee that one could be wrong even if one had the greatest expertise in citizenship.
The hon. Member for Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles (Mr. David Steel) raised on Clause 2(1)(c) the question of people who have moved not to the Commonwealth but to a foreign country. We had a long session on this in Committee, when the Secretary of State, in col. 179, said that somebody whose parents or grandparents had gone to a foreign country could, two generations later, enter the United Kingdom. My question is: does this apply only where the laws of that country provide for dual citizenship? For example, if the parents or grandparents had gone to Germany, to take the country mentioned by the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West in col. 183, a descendant would have a right, two generations later, to enter this country.

Mr. Arthur Lewis: The Common Market.

Mr. Merlyn Rees: The Common Market is relevant to this. Questions of citizenship may be involved.
All I can do at this point is to quote the Home Secretary in Committee:
The basic point is that, wherever he is born, he is free to come if he draws his position from the father born here."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Standing Committee B, 30th March, 1971; c. 179.]
That leads me once again to the question: is it correct to say just "father", or, now, because of this Bill, is it father and mother as well? It seems to me that the point which the hon. Member for Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles has raised is one which we discussed earlier and, if we are still not clear at this stage, it would be valuable to go into it further.

Mr. Sharples: If I may have leave to speak again, the answer to that question is: if he is not a Commonwealth citizen, only from the father, and if he is a

Commonwealth citizen, from the father or the mother. If I may say so, I think that the point to which the hon. Member for Leeds, South (Mr. Merlyn Rees) refers related to a number of people in South American countries among whom each generation registered as British citizens, and that is the way British citizenship was acquired.

Mr. Alexander W. Lyon: Is the hon. Gentleman sure of his reply there? I read the Home Secretary's observations in Committee, and I had the same question mark against that point as did my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, South (Mr. Merlyn Rees). Is it right that, if I am the child of a United Kingdom citizen who was born here, I am then entitled, under the British Nationality Act, to be a United Kingdom citizen if the citizenship laws of the country in which I am born and where I am a citizen by birth preclude me from dual citizenship? I can see that if I am entitled to dual citizenship and I am born in Germany or Tanzania and I am the son of a United Kingdom citizen I can have both United Kingdom citizenship and German or Tanzanian citizenship. On the other hand, if the country in which I am born has laws against dual citizenship—and many do—was not the Home Secretary's advice to the Committee wrong in regard to those circumstances, since I should be deprived of taking up my United Kingdom citizenship here? Or am I wrong about that?

Mr. Sharples: I am sorry to intervene again. My right hon. Friend's answer was absolutely right. It is derived from the father in respect of other than Commonwealth countries, and in respect of Commonwealth countries from the father and mother. If it is derived from the father, irrespective of the situation in the country concerned as to whether dual citizenship is allowed, the right is there.

Mr. David Steel: The House ought to pause at this point and be clear about what it is doing. I think that the Minister is right in what he has just said and, if I may say so, the hon. Member for Leeds, South (Mr. Merlyn Rees) was a little confused.
I am anxious to be clear, so I shall repeat my point. I am not talking about


people who hold citizenship of the United Kingdom and Colonies. Under our present law—Amendment No. 123 in the name of the hon. Member for York (Mr. Alexander W. Lyon) would establish or continue the present situation—someone whose father was born here and was a United Kingdom citizen is entitled to come to this country regardless of where he himself was born. I understand that to be the position throughout the world.
If we take out paragraph (c) of Clause 2(1), that still remains the position because he would hold it under the British Nationality Act. By paragraph (c) it is proposed to extend that principle to those people who, by virtue of their birth, are Commonwealth citizens and whose mothers were born in this country.
4.45 p.m.
I return now to the Minister's earlier reply. He said that this was a distinction which the Government intended. I can see that, originally, when the Bill was presented to the House, the Government intended a whole series of distinctions between Commonwealth citizens and non-Commonwealth citizens, for instance, that Commonwealth citizens, if they had mother, grandmother or grandfather born here, would have the right of abode. In Committee, we took out the grandfather and grandmother. We are, therefore, left with this: the Government are deliberately maintaining a distinction between the qualification to come here through descent from the mother for those who happen to be born in a Commonwealth country and the qualification for those who happen not to be born in a Commonwealth country.

Mr. Sharples: indicated assent.

Mr. Steel: The Minister agrees. That is what Clause 2(1)(c) is all about. I say that that is a nonsense. Either we should adopt the view of the hon. Member for York and retain the existing position under which everybody qualifies for entry and right of abode because his father was born here or we should say that everybody should qualify because his father or his mother was born here. What is illogical is to say that some people may qualify because their fathers were born here or others because they happened to be born in the right country at the right time and because their fathers or mothers were born here.
That is the illogical state of this proposed legislation. It was justified in the context of the Government's original thinking when they were creating a whole series of distinctions between Commonwealth citizens and aliens, but, since the Committee chose to remove the main part of those distinctions, the one distinction which is left, though relatively unimportant, creates an entirely unnecessary anomaly. I hope, therefore, that I shall have the sympathy of the House in, perhaps, pressing this matter to a Division. I certainly do not wish at this stage to seek leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Mr. Merlyn Rees: May I have leave to speak again? This is a valuable discussion to clear the ground because it will enable us to have a clearer debate on a subsequent Clause. First, may I make this observation and see whether it meets the Minister's approval? Clause 2 is not a citizenship Clause; it is a statement of right of abode. It is an immigration concept which enables immigration officers to decide whether someone may come in. The Government have firmly set their face against a citizen ship Act.
Therefore, when one is looking back to either paragraph (a) or paragraph (c) of Clause 2 and considering the concept of citizenship, one needs to refer to Section 5 of the British Nationality Act, 1948:
… a person born after the commencement of this Act shall be a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies by descent if his father is a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies at the time of his birth"—
and it does not matter, in the context of the right hon. Gentleman's remarks in Committee, whether he is living in Germany or Timbuctoo. But citizenship is one thing. This Bill is an Immigration Bill, not a citizenship Bill.
I put it to the hon. Member for Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles (Mr. David Steel), therefore, that, in terms of voting or not voting, the point which we have reached on this side is that what is required is not further confusion of the issue as between patriality or right of abode and citizenship. This will never be put right until we have a citizenship Act. Therefore, in our view, voting would be dangerous because it would


serve only to complicate the issue even more.
The point made by my hon. Friend the Member for York (Mr. Alexander W. Lyon) about Commonwealth citizens is more logical, but it deals with another aspect which at some time or other we have to decide in the context of Section 5 of the 1948 Act. How far back should one go in the context of citizenship? There are arguments for saying only to the person born here or to one generation, but that to go to two generations is stretching it too far. What we are trying to do is to get the climate of opinion right. The right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell) has played his part in that, as my hon. Friend the Member for York said. For heaven's sake, let us get citizenship right. This question of right of abode will only confuse the situation still further.

Mr. Alexander W. Lyon: Would it not further complicate the issue at this stage to give a right to a Commonwealth citizen which he does not have at present and which we might have to take from him in the future, if we clarify our law of citizenship, when taking it away could be a further breach of the Convention on Human Rights? That is the point I was making.

Mr. Merlyn Rees: In Committee, the hon. Member for Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles pursued this question at some length, and we had sympathy with his approach. All I am saying now is that my hon. Friend's approach is more logical, but it is not the matter to be put to the vote now. Indeed, it is a matter which we discussed and voted on in Committee, and we lost. I am not replying to my hon. Friend, though I think that he has logic on his side. I am replying to the hon. Member for Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles, and I am saying that we on this side think that it would not be appropriate to vote on this question. It is citizenship which we want to get right.

Amendment negatived.

Amendments made: No. 6, in page 2, line 22, leave out "and is the child of a person having at any time" and insert "born to or legally adopted by a parent

who at the time of the birth or adoption".

No. 8, in page 2, leave out lines 26 to 2 and insert:
(2) In relation to the father of a child born after the father's death, references in subsection (1) above to the time of the child's birth shall be replaced by references to the time of the father's death; and for purposes of that subsection—
(a) "parent" includes the mother of an illegitimate child; and—[Mr. Maudling.]

Mr. Maudling: I beg to move Amendment No. 9, in line 42, leave out from "there" to "without" in line 1 on page 3. I believe that we are taking at the same time Amendments Nos. 72 to 77.
The purpose of these Amendments is to clarify the law on the meaning of ordinary residence in this country and to lay down in the interpretation Clause, Clause 33, what is meant by ordinary residence. The effect will be that, except in the context of Clause 7, which safe guards the position of those already here and ensures that people who are already here will still be able to claim ordinary residence, even though they may be over staying their time—

Mr. Merlyn Rees: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. It may be that this has already been said sotto voce. We were trying to follow the Amendment Paper in relation to this group of Amendments, but we could not be sure about their order. One presumes that they are Government Amendments.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Robert Grant-Ferris): I should have said that, with Amendment No. 9, we are taking for debate Amendments Nos. 72 to 77.

Mr. Powell: Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Although it is understood that Government Amendments are automatically selected, I suggest that when the Chair in its wisdom has decided to group a number of them together it would be for the convenience of the House if in future that were shown to be the case.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I appreciate what the right hon. Gentleman said, but it is not always possible to do that. If this information does not appear on the Amendment Paper, it should be shown on the list which is to be found at the entrance to the Chamber. If that is not


the case, perhaps some arrangement has been reached since Mr. Speaker made his selection. I note what the right hon. Gentleman said and I will endeavour to see that that course is adhered to.

Mr. Peter Archer: Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I assure the House that no arrangement has been reached with the Opposition on this matter. It has taken us by surprise that Amendments Nos. 72 to 77 are to be discussed at this stage.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Let me make this matter quite clear. There is no obligation on the House or a Standing Committee to take all these selections together if they do not wish to do so. Therefore, if hon. Members demur at the selection which has been made they are entitled to do so. The Chair hopes that it is for the general convenience of the House to put these Amendments together, but if strong representations are made to the contrary the Chair must take note of them.

Mr. Merlyn Rees: Further to that point of order. There has been every co-operation on this stage of the Bill and the Chair has been extremely helpful. We are in some difficulty on this matter, but we feel that we can accept the situation as it is. No doubt the right hon. Gentleman, with his usual lucidity, will explain what it is all about and we hope that we shall be able to proceed.

Mr. Maudling: I am flattered by the hon. Member's confidence in me. I am sorry if there has been any confusion. I understood that this group of Amendments might be taken together since they are all on the same point. Amendments Nos. 73 to 77 are consequential Amendments to Schedule 1; Amendment No. 72 relates to Clause 33, the interpretation Clause. Amendments Nos. 9 and 72, which are the effective Amendments, define somebody who is "ordinarily resident" for the purpose of the Bill.
As the House is aware, ordinary residence for a certain specified number of years is the test for certain rights under the Bill. This defines the matter of ordinary residence. The Amendments provide that a person is not to be treated as ordinarily resident in the United Kingdom while he is here in breach of the immigration laws. In other words, if he

is here in breach he cannot claim that period as residence for the purpose of acquiring a right.
There is a special exception that arises under Clause 7, relating to Amendment 37, which is designed to safeguard the position of those who are already here to ensure that we are not taking away from anybody already here a right which they possess. People already here can count time they spend here overstaying their leave towards ordinary residence. We shall continue that illogical arrangement because of the undertaking I have given that we do not intend to take away a right which such people possess.
For the future it is sufficient to say that if people want to claim a right by virtue of residence here they must be lawfully residing here. They must not have residence here in breach of the immigration laws. That will be the effect of Amendments Nos. 9 and 72. The substantive Amendment is No. 72. The other Amendments are consequential to Schedule 1. They are required because the new Amendment to Clause 33 setting the matter out in general means that one does not have to set the matter out in the same way when one comes to the Schedule. These Amendments could be termed consequential. We are simply saying that when a man claims a right because of ordinary residence, it must be ordinary residence not in breach of the immigration laws.

5.0 p.m.

Mr. Peter Archer: The House will be grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for both the clarity of his exposition and his concession on Clause 7. We do not complain about the principle of what he is seeking to do. When I first read Amendment No. 9 I thought that the Home Secretary was overcome by a fit of conscience about the whole Bill.

Mr. Maudling: indicated dissent.

Mr. Archer: The right hon. Gentleman has quickly disabused me of that. I thought that he was indulging in a paroxysm of generosity which would have gone even further than I should have been inclined to go in his position. He seemed to be deleting the requirement that to qualify for patriality an immigrant had to be here lawfully in the first instance. Alas, all that was


taken away by Amendment No. 72. I content myself with commenting that, not for the first time, the promise of better things given by this Government when presented for payment turns out not to be intended seriously.

Mr. R. T. Paget: I am not altogether happy about this matter. The basis of our law has always been a deep respect for possession, whether legal or not. If people are in possession of property and no one interferes with that possession for a certain time, it is taken as legal and can be asserted against everybody.
Surely when somebody has been here for a very long time and has established residence—by "a very long time" I do not necessarily mean within the short limits of the Bill—we do not say that 20 or 30 years back he had no title. I think that there ought to be a limit. We may say that illegal residence shall not qualify for anything in the initial stages, but at a certain point I think that, as with land, title ought to be acquired by virtue of having been here a long time, whether lawfully or not.
I give a simple illustration of a man who, having been slipped across the Channel, has been residing here for 20 years and has bred his family here. If, after those 20 years, somebody spots that he arrived here by mistake, does that illegitimise his position and that of his children? I should be interested to hear the Home Secretary's view on that.

Mr. David Steel: I seek to raise almost the same point as that of the hon. and learned Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget). The Home Secretary will recall that in Committee the right hon. Member for Ashford (Mr. Deedes) raised an interesting point which he has so far chosen not to pursue on Report. Nevertheless, I think that it is worthy of serious consideration. The right hon. Gentleman asked what would be the position, after the Bill became law, of those who at some point in the past had entered this country illegally. We had a debate on the numbers. Without going into how many there may be, it is surely unsatisfactory that there should be people who, having been ordinarily resident here

for a very long time in any ordinary meaning of the words "ordinarily resident", under the Bill, and particularly in view of the Amendment now proposed, could never be ordinarily resident, however ordinarily resident they might appear to be, because at some stage in the past they had been, and presumably still are, in breach of a former immigration law.
This is an important matter. The right hon. Member for Ashford suggested that there might be some kind of amnesty for these people at the time that the Bill was going through Parliament. I should be interested to hear the Home Secretary's view.

Mr. Maudling: With the leave of the House. This is a matter of discretion. If a man has been here for a very long time, it is within our discretion to say that he can stay. However, the Amendment is concerned with a different point—the acquisition of a legal right to stay or of a legal right against deportation. We are saying that, as a matter of interpretation, the acquisition of a legal right to stay must be a period of legal residence. After that, if a man claims, "I have no legal right, but it would be unfair to throw me out because I have been here for a very long time", it would be a matter for the fair exercise of discretion.

Mr. Robert Hughes: Will the Home Secretary respond to the remarks made in Committee by his right hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Mr. Deedes) about the possibility at some stage—I do not know whether Third Reading would be appropriate—of offering some general amnesty to people who have been here for a very long time, but who initially entered illegally or overstayed their term, and so on? This is an important point. In Committee many hon. Members were seized of the point made by the right hon. Member for Ashford. I hear a whisper that this point will arise later. Perhaps the Home Secretary will inform me about the position.

Mr. Peter Archer: It might assist my hon. Friend if he looks at Amendment No. 37.

Amendment agreed to.

Amendment made: No. 10, in page 3, line 4, leave out 'the' and insert 'any'.—[Mr. Maudling.]

Mr. Merlyn Rees: I beg to move Amendment No. 12, in page 3, line 11, at end insert
'and by the next following subsection.
(5) Any Commonwealth citizen having the right of abode in the United Kingdom and being a person of full age and capacity shall be entitled, on making application therefor to the Secretary of State in the prescribed manner, to be registered as a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies and the provisions of section 9 of the British Nationality Act, 1948 (as set out in Appendix C to Schedule 1 to this Act) shall apply to any person so registered'.
Under the terms of the British Nationality Act, 1948, as amended by the Commonwealth Immigrants Act, 1962, a right was given to Commonwealth citizens to register as citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies after five years. I emphasise that it was a right; it was not discretion. I understand that this right was not much exercised over the years, but it was part of the concept of the 1948 Act and of the subsequent change when it was recognised that the Empire was turning into the Commonwealth.
We have gone over the question of citizenship on many occasions, so by this stage we have learned a great deal about it. Citizenship was of different types. There was citizenship of the United Kingdom and Colonies, citizenship of each Commonwealth country, and British subjects without citizenship, all of whom were Commonwealth citizens. I always found it surprising that British subjects without citizenship were Commonwealth subjects. Nevertheless, this is so. British protected persons were outside this group of Commonwealth citizens.
As part of the move by the Government to reform and change immigration control—the right hon. Gentleman has been careful on all occasions to say that, despite the Long Title, this is not a citizenship Bill but an Immigration Bill—we have the concept of the right of abode. That is an immigration concept, not a citizenship concept, although the two are related to some degree. We have seen in earlier discussions today how the two can diverge.
The right of abode, which is relevant to my argument, is an important part of Clause 2. Indeed, the whole of Clause 2 is a statement about the right of abode. Clause 1 contains the general principles

underlying this concept. In both Clauses the Government have fought shy of citizenship but have dreamt up the concept of right of abode and patriality.
I remind the House that the right of abode gives freedom to live in, to come into, and go from the United Kingdom, without let or hindrance. That is how the right of abode is defined. I also remind the House that Commonwealth citizenship brings certain rights. A Commonwealth citizen coming to this country, whether he comes here to settle, or for a short period, has all the rights of citizenship that are enjoyed in this country. For example, he has the right to vote. The new temporary work permit holders, too, will have these rights, and we know at election time all the political parties have their pamphlets translated into the languages of many Commonwealth countries, in order to appeal to Commonwealth citizens, and recently one has heard of the Conservative Party publishing such documents between elections.
I should like to relate those two concepts of citizenship and the right of abode to the question of registration, which used to be a right, but which is now at the discretion of the Home Secretary. What we seek to do by our Amendment is to say that
Any Commonwealth citizen having the right of abode in the United Kingdom and being a person of full age and capacity shall be entitled, on making application therefor to the Secretary of State in the prescribed manner, to be registered as a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies and the provisions of section 9 of the British Nationality Act, 1948 (as set out in Appendix C to Schedule 1 to this Act) shall apply to any person so registered.
What that adds up to is that a Commonwealth citizen who has a right of abode shall have a right of registration as a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies. The Government have seen fit to give a right of abode in the way in which I have defined it. What it adds up to basically in immigration terms is that such a person cannot be deported, but there are some people who not only have that right, but also have all the rights of citizenship of this country. Surely, therefore, citizenship of the United Kingdom and Colonies should go with the right of abode?
The Bill has many inconsistencies, arising from the grafting of immigration


control concepts, patriality, and right of abode, on to the existing law, without attending to citizenship. The view of this side of the House is that if a Commonwealth citizen is good enough to be patrial, if he is good enough to have the right of abode—which is receiving the accolade of the Bill—he should have all the rights of citizenship. Is it not illogical that, after five years, such a person has to go through all the paraphernalia of applying for citizenship when he has what is required already? We regard this as an anomaly, and we hope that the right hon. Gentleman will agree to deal with it in the way suggested in our Amendment.

Mr. Maudling: The hon. Gentleman raised an interesting point, and I listened with care to what he said. The Amendment proposes that
Any Commonwealth citizen having the right of abode in the United Kingdom
shall have the right to be registered. Commonwealth citizens having the right of abode are those who are children of a United Kingdom-born father, or a United Kingdom-born mother. Those who are children of a United Kingdom-born father are citizens. The only people affected are those who are children of, and have the right of abode through, United Kingdom-born mothers. The number will not be large. There is an anomaly here. I cannot accept the Amendment without a chance of looking more closely at the drafting, but I undertake to introduce an Amendment in this vein at a later stage.

Mr. Merlyn Rees: In view of the right hon. Gentleman's assurance, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

5.15 p.m.

Mr. S. C. Silkin: I beg to move Amendment No. 15, in page 3, line 29, leave out ' statements of the rules ' and insert:
'for approval drafts of the rules proposed to be'.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Robert Grant-Ferris): With that Amendment it will be convenient if we take the following: No. 16, in page 3, line 29, after 'rules', insert:
', or of any changes in the rules,'.

No. 111, in line 29, after 'rules', insert:
', which shall require the positive affirmation of both Houses of Parliament.'

No. 112, in line 29, after 'rules', insert:
'which shall be subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of either House of Parliament,'.

No. 17, in line 39, at end insert:
If a statement laid before either House of Parliament under this subsection is disapproved by a resolution of that House passed within the period of forty days beginning with the date of laying (and exclusive of any period during which Parliament is dissolved or prorogued or during which both Houses are adjourned for more than four days), then the Secretary of State shall as soon as may be make such changes or further changes in the rules as appear to him to be required in the circumstances and lay a further statement before Parliment accordingly.

No. 18, in line 39, at end insert:
(Rules referred to in subsection (2) above shall be of no effect until a draft thereof has been approved by a resolution of each House of Parliament.

Mr. Silkin: The Amendment—and those being taken with it—raise the point about how the rules, the drafts of which are to be laid by the Secretary of State, should be approved by the House. The Amendments tabled by the Secretary of State, and adumbrated in Committee, provide for the negative procedure, whereas the Opposition propose that the affirmative procedure should be employed.
This is a matter which invariably comes up for debate. The Government of the day most frequently seek to provide that the rules, regulations, or whatever they may be, shall be subject to the negative procedure, while the Opposition very often take the opposite view. That is true irrespective of which party is the Government.
In this case there are two factors that one has to bear in mind in relation to the rules. The rules are described as dealing with administration and control, but the draft rules that we have seen go a great deal further than that. They give substantive rights. Throughout the debates in Committee the Government relied upon the rules. Whenever we sought to introduce certain provisions into the Bill to give specific rights by means of legislation, the Government said that


it was not necessary because all that we wanted was provided for in the rules.
It follows that it may be necessary to amend the rules from time to time, and to legislate not merely in respect of immigration control but in respect of the rights of people coming into this country, or the rights of those who are already here. Where that is done we shall be dealing with rules, and not merely with administration, and it seems to us inadequate that the matter should be dealt with by way of negative control, which means having to take a chance on the ability to put down a Prayer and debate it. Our view is that instead of adopting that procedure, the Government ought to bring their proposals before the House formally and ask for approval for them.
The second point certainly applies today and is likely to continue for the foreseeable future. Of course, with alterations of our procedure, this matter may be cured, but at the moment it is extremely difficult to find time to debate matters which are subject to the negative procedure.
The right hon. Gentleman has gone some way towards dealing with that difficulty in Amendment No. 17, but even that allows a considerable risk that these important matters, arising over the original rules and in respect of amendments, may slip through without the House being able to debate them. It was said in Committee that the non-party Statutory Instruments Committee had expressed particularly grave concern about this matter.
Whatever may be said about the many sets of rules and regulations which are subject to that procedure, these particular rules are so closely akin to legislation that they must be regarded as of very great moment and much more important than many of the matters at present dealt with by the negative procedure.
Although we must accept with some gratitude the right hon. Gentleman's concession in an Amendment to provide that the House shall have some say during the passage of these rules into law—the Bill originally gave the Home Secretary complete discretion apart from having to lay the rules before Parliament—it is inadequate. He should go the whole way and enable Parliament to approve the rules affirmatively.

Mr. David Steel: If the Opposition divide on this Amendment, we shall support them. Our Amendment No. 111 is designed to achieve precisely the same purpose. With respect to the hon. and learned Member for Dulwich (Mr. S. C. Silkin), it is not just a question of the conventional arguments between Opposition and Government about parliamentary time. There is an important additional argument. We shall no longer be able to have our annual full day's debate on immigration in November under the Expiring Laws Continuance Act. This will be the new legislation and will not be subject to that control.
The Government should weigh this consideration and, when the Home Secretary drafts rules, he should have to seek the positive approval of the House, because there will be very few occasions on which we can debate our immigration legislation. That seems a fair compensation for giving up this opportunity for an annual debate. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will accept this reasonable point.

Mr. Maudling: I had hoped that I had gone a good way towards meeting the views of the House. I do not think that I can go further, for good reasons. If there is to be a system of immigration rules, it must be continuous and flexible, and should have no gaps. If there is a loophole, it may be necessary to act very quickly. After all, if people exploit a loophole, others waiting patiently in the queue will rightly resent it. So it has been recognised that the Government should act quickly in amending the rules.
It was generally accepted in 1962 that the rules should be not subject to Parliamentary control but merely laid before Parliament. That was the position, satisfactorily, for aliens before this Bill. But it was argued strongly in Committee that, because we were taking from Commonwealth citizens a statutory right and incorporating them in the rules, there was a case for making them subject to Parliamentary control. I accept that argument, and that is why I am proposing the Amendments that any new immigration rules or amendments should be subject to parliamentary control.
It must be by the negative procedure, because otherwise there might be considerable periods when Parliament was not sitting, when we had to act quickly


and could not. That would not be reasonable. We must have this power of flexibility as well as the power of a continuous set of rules. That is why we have drafted the Amendments as we have, providing for a statement to be made about any new rules and that, if it is annulled, we shall have to return with a proposal which is more likely to meet the wishes of the House.
I accept that important points could arise, but I feel confidence in the procedure of the House to the extent that I am sure that, if we introduced new rules or amendments of rules which raised important matters, the House could arrange to debate them urgently on a negative resolution. But I see how right hon. Members are to stress these important matters. However, I must rest on the argument that the rules should be both continuous and flexible. Since I have met the legitimate arguments made in Committee, I hope that the House will be prepared to give me these Amendments.

Mr. Peter Archer: The Secretary of State believes that Parliament can normally rise to the kind of situation which has troubled some of us. Can it not equally rise to the kind of situation which troubles the right hon. Gentleman? He seems to believe that there may be a requirement to act quickly. One would have thought that that does not necessarily mean that the Government will be acting in a vacuum. There will already be rules within the framework of which the Government can act. The right hon. Gentleman has been straightforward enough to publish the rules which he proposes to make if and when the Bill becomes law. If there is a sudden and completely unforeseen emergency—an emergency of a kind so uncontemplated that no provision has been made for it within the draft rules-one wonders what will prevent the right hon. Gentleman coming to the House and explaining the position.

Mr. Maudling: The House must be sitting for that to happen.

5.30 p.m.

Mr. Archer: By exercising one's ingenuity one can envisage anything, even an invasion from outer space, to create an unforeseen emergency. As far as I am aware, there has been no such

difficulty in the past. The House has always been understanding in these matters. There have been occasions when it has been reconvened during the long recess. Hon. Members have returned from their holidays when a completely unforeseen event has occurred. It would not be the first time—if something happened which necessitated the rules being changed quickly—that the House had been recalled. I will not develop this point. Hon. Members will easily recall precedents.
If the law were to require to be changed so quickly, before the public had had time to assimilate and understand the situation which had arisen, it would be all the more important for that change in the law to be discussed in Parliament. If such an unforeseen event had occurred which necessitated the rules being changed, the House should be taken into the Government's confidence and, in those circumstances, the Government could expect the sympathy of the House in securing the rapid change in the law that was required.
We are discussing serious matters. The Amendment is of a procedural character and normally that is sufficient to empty the Chamber. However, it will affect the daily lives of many people as closely as any provision in the Bill.
Let us not overlook the fact that the Bill is about the power of the Home Secretary to control the residence here of non-patrials who are subject to such conditions as the right hon. Gentleman thinks fit. How that control is to operate is contained in the rules which are the subject of this Amendment. We are concerned with such matters as whether a non-patrial will be permitted to work and change his job; whether he has been here long enough to obtain a mortgage or to make it worthwhile for him to bring over his family; what his relationship with the authorities will be; whether one group of non-patrials is to be discriminated against; and equally important matters, all of which will be contained in the rules. The extent of the right hon. Gentleman's power to make, unmake and alter the rules is the degree of his power over the lives of individuals.
The power of the Government over people as contained in delegated legislation is a subject which has exercised


the minds of politicians, political scientists and lawyers for more than a generation. In fairness, I must say that it is a subject which has exercised the mind of the Conservative Party, though perhaps, and understandably, more when hon. Gentlemen opposite have been in opposition than when they have been in Government. Whether, and, if so, how, those who make the rules are to be answerable to Parliament occupies a large proportion of the balance sheet which is, as it were, an index of people's freedom in Britain.
When this matter was first raised in Committee my hon. Friends embarked on an expedition into this fascinating sphere. It began with an exchange at the first sitting of the Standing Committee, when the hon. Gentleman the Minister of State sought to assure hon. Members in these terms:
It would not be possible"—
and he was speaking of the Bill as originally drafted—
for my right hon. Friend, or any successor, to alter the directions given to immigration officers without informing Parliament that he was doing so".—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Standing Committee B, 6th May, 1971; c. 558.]
That was perfectly right, but what worried us was the fact that while that was the most comforting assurance that the hon. Gentleman could give, we felt that we had not been elected to the House merely to be informed of what the Government were proposing to do. We therefore embarked on what transpired to be an expedition through a veritable jungle and we began by looking at the Statutory Instruments Act, 1946.
It seems that the rules as contemplated, even by the Amendment, will not be Statutory Instruments and will not fall within the ambit of that Act. We are fortified in this view by the fact that in Clause 33(2) the draftsman goes out of his way to refer to certain rules intended to be Statutory Instruments, and it seems to follow that where he does not say that, they are not contemplated as being Statutory Instruments. As drafted, it seems that the power of the Home Secretary is subject to no control whatever, save the necessity to tell us what he proposes to do.
I understand that if the rules were Statutory Instruments and nothing were said as to the method of control, the remedy of an hon. Member who wished to annul the rules would be to table an Early Day Motion. That might have been a satisfactory solution in the days when it was the practice to find time to debate Early Day Motions. I make no complaint about the fact that that practice has changed; the proliferation of Early Day Motions may have had something to do with it.
When an Early Day Motion is set down nowadays it may be taken up by the Press, discussed off the Floor of the House and canvassed among those who are seeking to mount a lobby, but normally it does not get discussed on the Floor of the House. Indeed, in this respect the power of hon. Members over what happens to an Early Day Motion seems no greater than the power of any individual who is not an hon. Member.
Reference has been made to the Report of the Select Committee on Statutory Instruments. It said—and this went even further in relation to Instruments which are the subject of the negative procedure—in this connection:
Your Committee do not consider that the present practice of the House regarding instruments subject to negative procedure and general instruments is satisfactory. Until fairly recent Sessions, it was the practice of the House that time was found for a debate in the House on all motions praying that statutory instruments be annulled; if for any reason time could not be found within the forty days' praying time, it was the convention that time would be found for a motion in similar terms to be debated (these motions are called ' out-of-time ' prayers). In recent Sessions the practice of the House has changed. It is now not uncommon for prayers to remain undebated either 'in-time' or 'out-of-time'.
There may come an occasion when the House will consider how it proposes to deal with a situation which could be serious, not only for hon. Members but for our constituents.
Whether that is still the remedy of hon. Members and whether the rules which we are discussing are not Statutory Instruments is, I confess, something which I have not been able to trace. The rules of order which are the tools of our trade are becoming the tools of very much a specialist trade in this House. When I discussed these matters with my constituents I find that they are puzzled by our processes. I am coming to feel that


my chief qualification for representing them is that I can understand their bewilderment.
We debated this issue in Standing Committee, as the right hon. Gentleman said, and he undertook to move an Amendment on Report. He has perfectly properly fulfilled that undertaking in the form of Amendment 17. The proposal, as I understand it, is that rules are to be made subject to a form of negative control. I understand, although the right hon. Gentleman did not say this, that the effect will be that an hon. Member seeking to annul could set down a Prayer for debate on a particular day; and we must therefore consider whether the right hon. Gentleman's proposal is sufficient to satisfy us.
Two matters concern us. First, as I understand it, if a Prayer to annul is set down, the prospects of its being debated and voted upon depend on two factors. First, it has to be reached before 11.30 p.m. That is the effect of Standing Order No. 4. If the other business of the House continues beyond that time, it is not debated or voted upon. Second, its prospects depend upon the Government's decision to set it down on the Order Paper above the line. I know little of the mysterious processes by which these matters are decided but they govern the fate of individuals to which these rules apply. So the power which the Amendment appears to give hon. Members is one which they may well find, when the time arises, they are unable to exercise.
Next, what troubles us is that the Amendments seek to provide that if the House passes a resolution disapproving a proposed rule, the Home Secretary may make changes
… as soon as may be …
and the changes which he may make are those which appear to him to be required. What worries us is whether this means that meanwhile the rules continue in force, even though they have been expressly disapproved by a Resolution of the House, and whether, in the meantime, authorities will continue to act on them and people's lives will continue to be governed by them.
Does it mean that the Home Secretary need not make the specific changes for which the House has called during

the debate but only such changes as seem to him to be required, so that he then lays a further draft of the amended rules before the House and the House may again disapprove of them and again the alterations continue in force? Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman could enlighten us as to how this will work out. From the terms of the Amendment, it appears that this will be the effect. The control which he seems to offer the House, if our understanding is correct, is all too shadowy. We have a responsibility to safeguard the liberties of the British people. With these tools we cannot discharge it.
Perhaps because in connection with aliens we have been a little more cavalier than we would have been normally in connection with Commonwealth citizens, in the past there has been what my hon. and learned Friend the Member for York (Mr. Alexander W. Lyon) called earlier a tacit agreement not to go too deeply into the tools provided to hon. Members to safeguard those who are most concerned. Certainly the Home Secretary sought to argue in Standing Committee that parliamentary control was not so slight as is sometimes argued. He said that if Members were ingenious enough, they could find a way to provide a debate. He quoted one of his illustrious predecessors, Mr. Chuter Ede, speaking on 13th February, 1962, as saying that one might, for example, question the salary of the Minister concerned, using the time on a Supply Day. If we are seeking to bring the Government under the control of the House in these matters, that is not good enough. An hon. Member seeking to raise the matters which he was elected to watch should not need to display his ingenuity in seeking an opportunity. Parliamentary procedure is not intended as an obstacle course to test ingenuity but as an aid to Members in carrying out their functions.
One is left wondering why we should erect fences and dig ditches and then discuss ways of evading them when we can provide the necessary opportunities in a straightforward way. If the problem is only as stated by the right hon. Gentleman today, that we may have a situation so entirely unexpected and unforeseeable that we need to change the law very quickly, one would have thought that this was just the situation


in which he ought to take the House into his confidence and in which the House would understand his difficulty.
We seek to provide, in plain English, that hon. Members may have the opportunity of fulfilling their duty to their constituents. Unless we receive a more convincing reply than we have had so far, we shall divide on the Amendments.

5.45 p.m.

Mr. Michael Fidler: I rise to make a special appeal to my right hon. Friend on these Amendments due to my concern regarding two especial principles which exist at present in the rules alone.
My right hon. Friend was good enough to give us advance notice of his proposed draft rules, both before and after entry—67 before entry and 51 after entry. It may well be that many of them, if not most of them, are susceptible to the procedure now proposed in Amendment No. 17. But there are two vital principles in those rules which are not adequately safeguarded under the proposed Amendment.
I refer first to the principle of no discrimination on grounds of race, creed or colour in dealing with immigrants on their arrival. I need not deal with them after entry, because the principle of no discrimination is enshrined in Statute in the Race Relations Act. But, more especially, I refer to the principle of the right to political asylum. Both of those principles are in the rules. My concern is that we should in some way guarantee those principles in a far firmer fashion than is apparently possible in the proposed amendment.
In my constituency there are a number of different ethnic groups—for example, a group of Pakistanis, and a group of Ukrainians who were formerly refugees. I am aware of their problems, fears and anxieties.
In another incarnation I am the President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews and thereby, as lay leader of British Jewry, I know their views and it is my responsibility to give expression to their experience. The Board of Deputies of British Jews was established in 1760, some 211 years ago, and several

of my distinguished predecessors have served in the House. For over two centuries it was a community of very small numbers, but it is one of over 400,000 now. For the last 70 years, a large number of Jewish refugees, those who have fled from persecution in the land of their origin, have come to this country. What I say is based on their experience. They and the Board are happy to know that the traditional practice of political asylum is enshrined in the history of the procedure of this great country. But we have to remember that to give an assurance to those people that they will not be harried in the future—not only Jewish people but all refugees coming to this country—we need a procedure by which the House can maintain a great deal of vigilance over those two principles.
My right hon. Friend was good enough to receive a deputation from the Board of Deputies. The deputation made that very point and asked that these two principles be written into the Act. At that time, and in Standing Committee, we were given to understand that some alternative would be brought forward whereby, since they are enshrined in the rules, the rules would be made as watertight and as safe as possible.
I was looking forward to the proposed Amendment which my right hon. Friend would be bringing forward today. I welcomed his clear statement in Committee. When dealing with points made by the hon. and learned Member for Dulwich (Mr. S. C. Silkin), he referred to assurances given by the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, and said:
He said, in the clearest possible terms, that nothing in the Bill affects in any way the hallowed traditions, policies, and practices of this country as pursued by succeeding Governments, as far as political refugees are concerned. He said that quite clearly and categorically. He also pointed out that, under the Draft Rules, it is stated specifically that deportation is not to take place if it meant that a man would go to a country where he would be at risk of persecution.
My right hon. Friend went on to say:
Therefore, it is quite misleading for the hon. and learned Gentleman to talk about a dilemma. I would not be in any dilemma. If a man can only be deported to a country where he would be persecuted, I would have no right to deport him. I would not contemplate deporting him. This is the position as it always has been. The only point of dispute on the Amendment is whether this


provision should be in the rules or in the Bill."—[OFFICIAL RFPORT, Standing Committee B, 11th May, 1971; c. 653–4.]
My right hon. Friend went on to suggest that he would be producing an Amendment which would safeguard the position to which I have referred.
My deep concern now is whether the Amendment goes far enough in connection with those two principles. I am not so deeply concerned about the other items, including the rules applying before and after entry, but these two principles are sacred and inviolable.
Perhaps my right hon. Friend can tell me whether the right to political asylum exists already in some overriding Statute which is not repealed or affected by the Bill. If that is so, my objection will fall. If those rights do not exist, either my right hon. Friend should be a little more generous in considering the other Amendments which have been tabled and make the rules placed before the House subject to an easier procedure for hon. Members to debate, or, if he believes that a negative procedure is appropriate in respect of most of the other rules, he should think again about the possibility of taking out of the rules the question of the right of political asylum and writing it into the Bill so that it will be part of a Statute.
I pay a special tribute to the humanitarian reputation which my right hon. Friend deservedly enjoys and to the very generous way in which he has interpreted his powers in this and other instances. Nobody's reputation stands higher. Indeed, I pay tribute to all of my right hon. Friend's predecessors for the ready way in which they have dealt with what I have already described as hallowed traditions in Britain.
My deep concern, which I hope that my right hon. Friend can satisfy, is that we should take steps in dealing with the Bill to make it beyond the power of some illiberally-minded person or persons in the House in future to find some easy way of affecting these two vital principles.

Mr. Sydney Bidwell: As with last night's debate on an earlier part of the Bill, on this Amendment there has been an obvious expression of anxiety and disquiet on both sides. The hon. Member for Bury and Radcliffe (Mr. Fidler) has strongly expressed the anxiety about the distinction of what is to be in rules and what is to be in Statutes.
There is a curious illogicality in the Secretary of State's attitude in providing for certain regulations to be in Statute form, namely, on the question of arrangements for virtual repatriation but which do not appear in the Acts of 1962 and 1968 which are repealed by the Bill. It is illogical that the right hon. Gentleman should think then in terms of rules which can be challenged only under the negative procedure rather than under the positive procedure.
I am a veteran of debates on the expiring laws, having taken part in such debates annually since I entered the House five years ago. The Secretary of State is right to point out that in those debates it has been argued from both Front Benches that it would be very valuable if we could get our race relations conditions to such a degree of correctness that we no longer needed this annual ritual.
We have not got the position right in the Bill. Both sides agree that it will be necessary to come forward with extra Statute law to overcome the problems which will arise with regard to immigration. Both sides have said that this is not a citizens' law. The right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell) has logically argued that sooner or later we shall have to come to it and my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, South (Mr. Merlyn Rees) has emphasised it several times. This is why we had that curious alliance in removing the wider aspect of patriality, because of the inexorable logic of the argument, no matter who was presenting it. We do not go right to the end of the road with the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West—that is, if we all know exactly where he wants to go.
There is a new ingredient now in our considerations on the question of changing rules when Parliament is not sitting, or changing rules even when it is sitting, and when any hon. Member who wishes to challenge the rules must rely on his guile. One very important fact in our minds is the possibility of extending the common travel area. In Committee, the Secretary of State said that he thinks that he can overcome the situation on possible entry to the E.E.C. without changing the Statutes, simply by writing a rule saying that the common travel area, which now embraces the whole of the British Isles,


including the southern state of Ireland, should be extended.
I do not know whom the Secretary of State thought he was kidding when he said that. It is obvious that accession to the Treaty of Rome will need new Statutes if our laws are to accord with the Treaty, because our accession will considerably enlarge the numbers of people who will have the right to enter Britain, not on claims of patriality, but under the laws and progress of the Treaty of Rome as it has so far advanced.
I hope that my right hon. and hon. Friends will press this matter to a Division so that our anxieties are clearly spelled out. This is not a finished set of laws for our immigration problem. The matter will have to be continually discussed. The more discussion the better. The greater the facility for discussion the better. This is why I support the Amendment.

Mr. Maudling: May I with the leave of the House reply to some points which have arisen?
I thought that some of the arguments which were advanced by the hon. and learned Member for Rowley Regis and Tipton (Mr. Peter Archer) were directed not to my Amendments, but to the text of the Bill before my Amendments were proposed. The hon. and learned Gentleman correctly stated that I had quoted Mr. Chuter Ede's comment that hon. Members had to use their ingenuity on certain occasions. I did indeed refer to that, but I expressly moved away from the Chuter Ede position in the direction desired by hon. Members opposite; because I am for the first time in the history of our legislation introducing parliamentary control over the rules.

Mr. S. C. Silkin: The right hon. Gentleman is no doubt entitled to say that, but does he not remember that many of the subjects which he is putting into the rules were formerly put into the Statute? I have in mind the express provision of Section 2 of the 1962 Act governing the right of wives and children under the age of 16 to enter. Such matters of substance are now in the rules, thus creating an entirely different situation.

Mr. Maudling: I said that in my earlier speech. I said that it was precisely because statutory rights were being taken

away and put into the rules and not into the Statute that I accepted the argument that the rules made under these conditions should be made subject to Parliamentary control.

Mr. Peter Archer: Does not the Secretary of State appreciate that the burden of our difficulty is that his Amendment does not provide hon. Members with a way of controlling his use of the rule-making power, because such weapons as he is putting into our hands are not effective?

Mr. Maudling: I will come to that point in a moment, because that is the basis on which it is probable that we shall be having a Division on this matter.
In reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Bury and Radcliffe (Mr. Fidler), may I say that I made a deliberate statement in Committee about the rights of political asylum which are not and will not be disturbed. Apart from the rules, it is an international obligation by which this country is bound. The right of political asylum rests on that. Anything I did to take away that right would be in breach of international treaties. That is the other safeguard.
The issue is fairly simple. I have proposed that there should be Parliamentary control through a negative procedure. On the whole, Labour hon. Members think that it should be an affirmative procedure. They argue that in such an important matter the Home Secretary should not be able to take action until the House had approved it. But I think that it is very important to be able to act immediately, even when the House is not sitting.
That is the argument of both sides. One can take one's choice. I think that the matter is fairly evenly balanced. I must adhere to my point of view. If the Opposition feel that they must press the Amendment to a Division, I am sorry, but I shall have to resist it.

6.0 p.m.

Mr. S. C. Silkin: With the leave of the House—

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Robert Grant-Ferris): Order. The hon. and learned Gentleman does not require leave of the House to speak again; he is the proposer of the Amendment. Nor does anyone in charge of the Bill require the leave


of the House to speak again, even though there be six in charge of the Bill.

Mr. Silkin: I am grateful to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I hope that even if I do not require leave I still have it.
The Opposition are not satisfied with the Home Secretary's reply. I do not know how many hon. Members have had the rules in front of them whilst we have been discussing these matters. The draft rules on control of entry are 67 in number, and those in relation to control after entry number 51. A number of them are very detailed. In some cases they are matters which have been dealt with by Statute, and when they are dealt with by Statute, as the right hon. Gentleman is only too well aware, a Committee of the House and the House on Report can examine the provisions line by line and see whether they are adequate.
That right of the House is being wholly removed in relation to matters of considerable substance—not merely questions of how the procedure should work but the rights of people coming into this country and people who are already in the country. Those rights are being affected, and they are being provided for by the rules with no opportunity for hon. Members to debate line by line whether the right rules are being provided.
I agree with the hon. Member for Bury and Radcliffe (Mr. Fidler) that, whatever may be the position in international law, when we come to a question of immigration control which raises so tangibly and in such an important way the question of what the rights of political asylum and so on should be, it is highly desirable that those matters should be clearly ex-pessed in a Statute dealing with the matter rather than being tucked away in rules dealing with questions of procedure and practice, in some cases merely repeating what the Act says and in others dealing with substantial matters affecting people's

rights. It is not sufficient for the Home Secretary to say, "A situation may arise which needs to be dealt with quickly, and therefore we want to be able to deal with the matter so that our amendments come into force immediately and do not have to wait to be approved by the House, because it may be in Recess." What the right hon. Gentleman is there talking about are procedural matters, when someone may have found a dodge which enables him to get in, or something like that which may not have been thought of before.

The fault is the right hon. Gentleman's. I should have a great deal more sympathy with his point of view if he put that kind of matter into a separate document dealt with by the negative procedure, and put the substantive matters about which the hon. Member for Bury and Radcliffe talked—the matters that were the subject of the 1962 Act and really affect the rights of citizens—into a totally different document which, if it cannot be part of the Bill, can at least be made subject to the affirmative procedure. To lump them all together into two documents, one dealing with control of entry and the other with control after entry, and, because some parts of those matters might be matters of practice which would need to be dealt with in a hurry, to say that the whole lot should be subject to negative procedure, despite the changes in people's rights that may result, is entirely wrong.

Unless the Home Secretary can modify his reply, the House should divide on the Amendment. It is a matter of principle, and I hope that my right hon. and hon. Friends will follow me into the Division Lobby.

Question put, That the Amendment be made:—

The House divided: Ayes 169, Noes 195.

Division No. 377.]
AYES
[6.6 p.m.


Albu, Austen
Boardman, H. (Leigh)
Corbet, Mrs. Freda


Allaun, Frank (Salford, E.)
Booth, Albert
Crawshaw, Richard


Archer, Peter (Rowley Regis)
Bottomley, Rt. Hn. Arthur
Crosland, Rt. Hn. Anthony


Armstrong, Ernest
Buchan, Norman
Cunningham, G. (Islington, S. W.)


Ashton, Joe
Buchanan, Richard (G'gow, Sp'burn)
Dalyell, Tam


Bagier, Gordon A. T.
Callaghan, Rt. Hn. James
Davidson, Arthur


Bannett, Joel
Campbell, I. (Dunbartonshire, W.)
Davits, Denzil (Llanelly)


Beaney, Alan
Carter, Ray (Birmingh'm, Northfield)
Davies, G. Elfed (Rhondda, E.)


Benn, Rt. Hn. Anthony Wedgwood
Carter-Jones, Lewis (Eccles)
Davies, Ifor (Gower)


Bidwell, Sydney
Clark, David (Colne Valley)
Davies, S. O. (Merthyr Tydvil)


Bishop, E. S.
Cocks, Michael (Bristol, S.)
Davis, Clinton (Hackney, C.)


Blenkinsop, Arthur
Cohen, Stanley
Davis, Terry (Bromsgrove)




Deakins, Eric
Jones, Gwynoro (Carmarthen)
Penttand, Norman


Dempsey, James
Jones, T. Alec (Rhondda, W.)
Perry, Ernest G.


Doig, Peter
Kaufman, Gerald
Prescott, John


Dormand, J. D.
Kinnock, Neil
Price, J. T. (Westhoughton)


Douglas, Dick (Stirlingshire, E.)
Lamond, James
Price, William (Rugby)


Duffy, A. E. P.
Latham, Arthur
Rankin, John


Dunn, James A.
Lawson, George
Rees, Merlyn (Leeds, S.)


Dunnett, Jack
Leadbitter, Ted
Roberts, Albert (Normanton)


Edwards, Robert (Bilston)
Leonard, Dick
Roberts, Rt. Hn. Goronwy (Caernarvon)


Edwards, William (Merioneth)
Lestor, Miss Joan
Roderick, Caerwyn E. (Br'c'n &amp; R'dnor)


English, Michael
Lever, Rt. Hn. Harold
Rodgers, William (Stockton-on-Tees)


Evans, Fred
Lewis, Ron (Carliste)
Roper, John


Faulds, Andrew
Lipton, Marcus
Ross, Rt. Hn. William (Kilmarnock)


Fisher, Mrs. Doris (B'ham, Ladywood)
Lomas, Kenneth
Sheldon, Robert (Ashton-under-Lyne)


Fitch, Alan (Wigan)
McBride, Neil
Shore, Rt. Hn. Peter (Stepney)


Fletcher, Ted (Darlington)
McCartney, Hugh
Short, Rt. Hn. Edward (N 'c'tle-u-Tyne)


Foley, Maurice
McElhone, Frank
Short, Mrs. Renée (W'hampton, N. E.)


Ford, Ben
McGuire, Michael
Silkin, Hn. S. C. (Dulwich)


Fraser, John (Norwood)
Mackenzie, Gregor
Sillars, James


Gilbert, Dr. John
Mackintosh, John P.
Silverman, Julius


Ginsburg, David
McMillan, Tom (Glasgow, C.)
Skinner, Dennis


Gourlay, Harry
Mahon, Simon (Beotle)
Small, William


Grant, George (Morpeth)
Marks, Kenneth
Smith, John (Lanarkshire, N.)


Grant, John D. (Islington, E.)
Marquand, David
Spearing, Nigel


Griffiths, Eddie (Brightside)
Marsden, F.
Spriggs, Leslie


Griffiths, Will (Exchange)
Marshall, Dr. Edmund
Stallard, A. W.


Hamilton, William (Fife, W.)
Mason, Rt. Hn. Roy
Steel, David


Hamling, William
Meacher, Michael
Strang, Gavin


Hardy, Peter
Mellish, Rt. Hn. Robert
Swain, Thomas


Harper, Joseph
Millan, Bruce
Taverne, Dick


Harrison, Walter (Wakefield)
Milne, Edward (Blyth)
Thomas, Rt. Hn. George (Cardiff, W.)


Hart, Rt. Hn. Judith
Morgan, Elystan (Cardiganshire)
Thorpe, Rt. Hn. Jeremy


Heffer, Eric S.
Morris, Charles R. (Openshaw)
Tomney, Frank


Horam, John
Murray, Ronald King
Tuck, Raphael


Houghton, Rt. Hn. Douglas
Ogden, Eric
Urwin, T. W.


Hughes, Rt. Hn. Cledwyn (Anglesey)
O'Halloran, Michael
Wellbeloved, James


Hughes, Mark (Durham)
O'Malley, Brian
Whitehead, Phillip


Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen, N.)
Orme, Stanley
Willey, Rt. Hn. Frederick


Hughes, Roy (Newport)
Oswald, Thomas
Williams, W. T. (Warrington)


Janner, Greville
Owen, Dr. David (Plymouth, Sutton)
Wilson, Rt. Hn. Harold (Huyton)


Jenkins, Hugh (Putney)
Palmer, Arthur
Woof, Robert


Jenkins, Rt. Hn. Roy (Stechford)
Pannell, Rt. Hn. Charles



John, Brynmor
Pardoe, John
TELLERS FOR THE AYES:


Johnson, Walter (Derby, S.)
Parry, Robert (Liverpool, Exchange)
Mr. James Hamilton and


Jones, Dan (Burnley)
Pavitt, Laurie
Mr. John Golding.


Jones, Rt. Hn. Sir Elwyn (W. Ham, S.)
Pendry, Tom





NOES


Adley, Robert
Cormack, Patrick
Harrison, Brian (Maldon)


Alison, Michael (Barkston Ash)
Costain, A. P.
Harrison, Col. Sir Harwood (Eye)


Alfason, James (Hemel Hempstead)
Critchley, Julian
Haselhurst, Alan


Astor, John
Crouch, David
Hastings, Stephen


Atkins, Humphrey
Dean, Paul
Hawkins, Paul


Awdry, Daniel
Deedes, Rt. Hn. W. F.
Hicks, Robert


Baker, Kenneth (St. Marylebone)
Dixon, Piers
Higgins, Terence L.


Balniel, Lord
Dykes, Hugh
Hiley, Joseph


Batsford, Brian
Eden, Sir John
Hill, James (Southampton, Test)


Beamish, Col. Sir Tufton
Edwards, Nicholas (Pembroke)
Holland, Philip


Bennett, Dr. Reginald (Gosport)
Elliott, R. W. (N'c'stle-upon-Tyne, N.)
Holt, Miss Mary


Biffen, John
Eyre, Reginald
Hornsby-Smith, Rt. Hn. Dame Patricia


Blaker, Peter
Farr, John
Howe, Hn. Sir Geoffrey (Reigate)


Boardman, Tom (Leicester, S. W.)
Fell, Anthony
Howell, David (Guildford)


Body, Richard
Fenner, Mrs. Peggy
Howell, Ralph (Norfolk, N.)


Boscawen, Robert
Fidler, Michael
Hunt, John


Bossom, Sir Clive
Finsberg, Geoffrey (Hampstead)
Hutchison, Michael Clark


Bowden, Andrew
Fisher, Nigel (Surbiton)
Iremonger, T. L.


Bray, Ronald
Fletcher-Cooke, Charles
James, David


Brinton, Sir Tatton
Fookes, Miss Janet
Jenkin, Patrick (Woodford)


Brown, Sir Edward (Bath)
Foster, Sir John
Jennings, J. C. (Burton)


Bruce-Gardyne, J.
Fowler, Norman
Jessely, Toby


Buchanan-Smith, Alick (Angus, N &amp; M)
Fox, Marcus
Kaberry, Sir Donald


Bullus, Sir Eric
Gardner, Edward
King, Evelyn (Dorset, S.)


Burden, F. A.
Gibson-Watt, David
King, Tom (Bridgwater)


Butler, Adam (Bosworth)
Clyn, Dr. Alan
Kinsey, J. R.


Campbell, Rt. Hn. G.(Moray &amp; Nairn)
Goodhew, Victor
Knox, David


Carlisle, Mark
Gorst, John
Langford-Holt, Sir John


Channon, Paul
Cower, Raymond
Legge-Bourke, Sir Harry


Chapman, Sydney
Gray, Hamish
Le Marchant, Spencer


Chataway, Rt. Hn. Christopher
Green, Alan
Loveridge, John


Chichester-Clark, R.
Griffiths, Eldon (Bury St. Edmunds)
Luce, R. N.


Churchill, W. S.
Grylls, Michael
McAdden, Sir Stephen


Clegg, Walter
Gummer, Selwyn
MacArthur, Ian


Cooke, Robert
Hall, Miss Joan (Keighley)
McCrindle, R. A.




McLanen, Martin
Page, John (Harrow, W.)
Stoddart-Scott, Col. Sir M.


McMaster, Stanley
Parkinson, Cecil (Enfield, W.)
Stokes, John


Macmillan, Maurice (Farnham)
Percival, Ian
Sutcliffe, John


McNair-Wilson, Michael
Pounder, Rafton
Tapsell, Peter


Madel, David
Powell, Rt. Hn. J. Enoch
Taylor, Sir Charles (Eastbourne)


Maginnis, John E.
Price, David (Eastleigh)
Taylor, Edward M. (G'gow, Cathcart)


Mather, Carol
Proudfoot, Wilfred
Taylor, Robert (Croydon, N. W.)


Maude, Angus
Pym, Rt. Hn. Francis
Tebbit, Norman


Maudling, Rt. Hn. Reginald
Quennell, Miss J. M.
Temple, John M.


Mawby, Ray
Raison, Timothy
Thatcher, Rt. Hn. Mrs. Margaret


Maxwell-Hyslop, R. J.
Ramsden, Rt. Hn. James
Thomas, John Stradling (Monmouth)


Meyer, Sir Anthony
Redmond, Robert
Thompson, Sir Richard (Croydon, S.)


Mills, Peter (Torrington)
Reed, Laurance (Bolton, E.)
Trafford, Dr. Anthony


Moate, Roger
Rhys Williams, Sir Brandon
Tugendhat, Christopher


Molyneaux, James
Roberts, Michael (Cardiff, N.)
Turton, Rt. Hn. Sir Robin


Money, Ernie
Roberts, Wyn (Conway)
Vaughan, Dr. Gerard


Monks, Mrs. Connie
Rossi, Hugh (Hornsey)
Waddington, David


Monro, Hector
Royle, Anthony
Walder, David (Clithero[...])


Montgomery, Fergus
Russell, Sir Ronald
Walker-Smith, Rt. Hn. Sir Derek


More, Jasper
Scott, Nicholas
Wall, Patrick


Morgan, Geraint (Denbigh)
Sharples, Richard
Ward, Dame Irene


Morgan-Giles, Rear-Adm.
Shaw, Michael (Sc'b'gh &amp; Whitby)
Warren, Kenneth


Morrison, Charles (Devizes)
Shelton, William (Clapham)
Wilkinson, John


Mudd, David
Simeons, Charles
Wolrige-Gordon, Patrick


Murton, Oscar
Skett, T. H. H.
Wood, Rt. Hn. Richard


Neave, Airey
Soref, Harold
Wylie, Rt. Hn. N. R.


Nicholls, Sir Harmar
Spence, John
Younger, Hn. George


Normanton, Tom
Sproat, Iain



Oppenheim, Mrs. Sally
Stainton, Keith
TELLERS FOR THE NOES:


Osborn, John
Stanbrook, Ivor
Mr. Tim Fortescue and Mr. Keith Speed.


Owen, Idris (Stockport, N.)
Stewart-Smith, D. G. (Belper)



Page, Graham (Crosby)

Further Amendment made: No. 16, in page 3, line 29, after "rules", insert:
, or of any changes in the rules,".—[Mr. Maudling.]

6.15 p.m.

Mr. David Steel: I beg to move Amendment No. 109, in page 3, line 35, leave out 'not'.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: It will be convenient to take at the same time Amendment No. 110, page 3, line 37, leave out from '1(4)' to end of line 39.

Mr. Steel: The Amendment was tabled in Committee, but because it was bracketed with many others we did not get a chance to consider it. I am therefore grateful for the opportunity to question the wording of subsection (2) which, after requiring the Secretary of State from time to time to
lay before Parliament statements of the rules",
goes on to say:
… section 1(4) above shall not be taken to require uniform provision to be made by the rules as regards admission of persons for a purpose or in a capacity specified in section 1(4) (and in particular, for this as well as other purposes of this Act, account may be taken of citizenship or nationality).
There may well be arguments about why the Government should discriminate between non-citizens or different nationalities. But this is a very wide power and

it is potentially extremely discriminatory and unpleasant. If there is a good reason for the power being in the Bill, I should like to hear it. In the absence of hearing it, it would be preferable not to permit the Home Secretary to have power to make discrimination rules of the kind envisaged in the Clause.
This is a genuinely probing Amendment, and I hope that the Minister of State will be able to explain the purpose of subsection (2).

Mr. Sharples: I am grateful to the hon. Member for Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles (Mr. Steel) for explaining the purpose of the Amendment, because at first sight I was far from clear about its intent.
The Amendment could have the effect, although I would not be certain about it, of ruling out differentiation in the rules as between different classes of people who come to this country. I am sure that the House accepts that there should be differences in the rules as between people who come here to work, visitors, students and dependants. But I do not think that that is the point which the hon. Gentleman had in mind. I think that his point is whether there should be differentiation in the rules between people of different nationalities and people holding a different citizenship.
But differentiation already exists, and it is right that it should. For instance,


we admit Commonwealth citizens who come here as working holidaymakers. That privilege is not extended to aliens. Many young Australians and new Zealand people, in particular, avail themselves of this concession. It is absolutely right that this special privilege should be available to young people from the Commonwealth. It should be possible to discriminate in this way without being unfair, and that is the purpose of the Clause.

Mr. Merlyn Rees: In the run-up to the General Election, when the Conservative Party was laying down its approach to the question of immigration, it was said that there would be uniformity in the immigration laws and that aliens and Commonwealth citizens would be treated in exactly the same way. The Minister of State offers as justification for writing the words "uniform provision" in to Statute law the fact that the Government want to provide for doing precisely the opposite of what they argued before the election.
I wish to make a more prosaic point. The Minister of State has justified inclusion of the word "uniform" in the phrase "uniform provision" purely on the ground of being able to distinguish between Commonwealth citizens and aliens. He says that there is a distinction between the treatment of students from the Commonwealth and students from elsewhere. Could not the wording of the Bill be read in a completely different way? It seemed to us that the hon. Member for Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles (Mr. Steel) had a point in his Amendment even if the precise way in which he chose to deal with it might lead to the problems to which the Minister referred. Would the hon. Gentleman consider whether we require provision in a Statute to the effect that a Clause
shall not be taken to require uniform provision to be made"?
What is the reason for this curious provision? This is a small point, but perhaps it can be considered before Report.

Mr. Sharples: I should not like to give an assurance on this point. It is right that it should be made clear in the Bill that differentiation can be made. We are often criticised for not spelling things out in Bills. In this case we have spelt

out the matter. There can be differentiation and it is right that there should be differentiation. The Amendment would force the Government to bring about absolute uniformity, and I do not think the House would wish that to happen.

Mr. David Steel: I accept what the Minister of State has said about the effect, in particular, of Amendment No. 109. On Amendment No. 110, what I said earlier about maintaining distinctions between people who come from certain countries as distinct from others—for example, people who come here on working holidays—underlines the basic flaw in the Bill. The Government are maintaining many of the illogicalities while proposing to introduce uniform provisions.
These distinctions stem from the fact that we are not to have a citizenship Bill to treat all non-citizens alike. This flaw cannot be put right in the way that I propose in the Amendment. I maintain strong objection to the underlying philosophy of the Clause, but I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Amendment made: No. 17, in page 3, line 39, at end insert:
If a statement laid before either House of Parliament under this subsection is disapproved by a resolution of that House passed within the period of forty days beginning with the date of laying (and exclusive of any period during which Parliament is dissolved or prorogued or during which both Houses are adjourned for more than four days), then the Secretary of State shall as soon as may be make such changes or further changes in the rules as appear to him to be required in the circumstances and lay a further statement before Parliament accordingly.—[Mr. Maudling.]

Mr. S. C. Silkin: I beg to move Amendment No. 19, in page 4, line 24, leave out from 'good' to end of line 26.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: It will be convenient also to discuss the following:
Amendment No. 28, Clause 5, page 7, line 2, at end insert:
Provided that that other person and his spouse (if any) so elect
Amendment No. 29, Clause 5, page 7, line 4, leave out 'eighteen' and insert 'sixteen'.
Amendment No. 30, Clause 5, page 7, line 5, after 'her', insert 'husband and'.
Amendment No. 31, Clause 5, page 7, line 6, leave out 'eighteen' and insert 'sixteen'.

Mr. Silkin: One of the more unpleasant features of this disreputable Bill, which has been most widely resented, is the power to deport members of the family of a person who is deported. It is distasteful, to say the least, to visit the sins of the father on the child or wife of the husband. It is distasteful to provide by law that because of the father's sins the child must not merely leave our shores but must never return—because that is the meaning of deportation—even though he may leave as a babe-in-arms and may wish to return as a responsible adult. It is distasteful to those who have committed no offence and broken no condition that they should be branded as deportees. It is distasteful that this should apply even to the separated wife or the wholly independent child.
We pressed this argument in Committee, and, in later Amendments, the Home Secretary has moved a limping half step towards us. He has proposed that members of the family should avoid the stigma of deportation by having the opportunity to leave voluntarily before they are deported. We regard that concession—if that is the right word—as wholly inadequate.
In Committee, the Opposition urged the Government to allow a right of appeal on the merits—a right which the Bill does not allow. We urged that the family should have the right to decide for themselves whether to leave with the deportee or to stay behind. We pressed the case of the wife and child who no longer had the slightest contact with or dependency on the deportee. But our proposals to deal with these cases fell on totally deaf ears.
The philosophy of the Government and of the Home Secretary throughout our discussions on the Bill is not normally heard from the lips of members of the Conservative Party. The philosophy appears to be to trust the gentleman in Whitehall. That is the Government's only solution to the problem—indeed, it is their only solution to practically every problem which has arisen under the Bill. The right hon. Gentleman seems to have a pathological fear of letting people decide for themselves and of independent

tribunals, as we witnessed last night when we discussed new Clause No. 2.
The Opposition's position about family deportation is clear. We put forward three specific choices. The first is to get rid of the concept of family deportation. That is dealt with in Amendment No. 19. The Government's fear that deportation will leave a trail of destitute families in this country is utterly unrealistic, and they have produced a distasteful remedy to deal with a miniscule problem.
Our second proposed choice is to give the members of the family a right of election. That is dealt with in Amendment No. 28. When it is in the best interests of a family that all its members should go, the parents would elect whether they should all go. With the right of election there should be equality between the sexes. The Bill empowers the wife but not the husband of a deportee to be deported. If the right to elect is given we see no reason for the distinction. That is dealt with by our Amendment No. 30.
Again, with the right of election, we see no reason whatever for including children over the age of 16. At present the Bill includes those up to 18 years of age, an age at which they will frequently be wholly independent of their parents, perhaps even married and living separate lives. Amendments 29 and 31 deal with that. That is our second policy on election. Our third policy is to provide a right of appeal and Amendment 97 deals with that. That Amendment is not being discussed now but will be discussed later.
We put forward these proposals in Committee but up to now they have all been rejected. There has been no election, no appeal—the gentlemen in Whitehall are to decide. "We can safely leave it to them", say the Government. "If the deportee's family is not satisfied they can always complain to their Member of Parliament." The privilege of a Member of Parliament to take up his constituency problems is a valuable one and one from which I do not wish to derogate but it must not be used as a cloak for giving the gentlemen in Whitehall power to decide the future of the lives of people who have committed no other fault than to be the wife or child of one who is subject to deportation.
I invite the right hon. Gentleman to cast aside his phobias about appealing to independent tribunals and matters of that kind and to discard what we believe is the obnoxious power to regulate the lives of others. If he does that he will not lose in stature or in respect, in this House or in the country.

6.30 p.m.

Mr. Maudling: I listened with great interest to what the hon. and learned Member for Dulwich (Mr. S. C. Silkin) had to say. We debated this extremely difficult problem at some length in Committee. We are all aware of the problem which arises when a man is deported and abandons his family, leaving them here to be a charge on the country in circumstances which may be bad for them and the community. We therefore put forward this power, which is modelled on Canadian legislation.

Mr. Gerald Kaufman (Machester, Ardwick): So what?

Mr. Maudling: I thought the House would be interested, that is all. It is operated in Canada and we modelled the power on that. In Committee I said—and this is important—that I saw that deportation carried a stigma which as the hon. and learned Gentleman has said is permanent. I therefore said that we would certainly never deport anyone who was prepared to go of their own free will. I am willing to continue that undertaking. Deportation takes place only in circumstances where the people concerned say that they will not go and therefore it is decided that, unfortunately, we have to insist on their going.
The hon. and learned Gentleman has put forward four points: one that we should abolish the provision altogether; secondly, that we should give a right of election; third was the point about the age of children, and fourth the point about the right of appeal. The first two are really the same thing. If we give people the power to elect we are taking away the power of deportation. I am afraid that, for reasons I have given, I do not feel that I could accept that.
On the question of the age of children, 18 or 16, there are two reasons behind the age of 18. First, 18 is now accepted as the age of majority and 18 is the age

used for the purpose of allowing dependants to come into this country. Therefore it seems right to choose the age of 18 when dealing with this matter. There will only be a small number of cases of people living with a parent who has to be deported.

Mr. Merlyn Rees: Does the right hon. Gentleman mean that this is a change which is in the Bill? Do I not recall that, under the 1962 Act, a statutory right was given to Commonwealth wives to enter as well as to children of 16 and under? It was a discretionary right above the age of 16 and on that occasion the Government of the day took 16 as being the age, not 18.

Mr. Maudling: Eighteen is the age under the draft Immigration Rules (Cmnd. 64606).

Mr. Merlyn Rees: It is a change?

Mr. Maudling: It is, yes. It is under the draft rules. For these reasons I do not think that I can accept the proposals.
I turn to the question of right of appeal—

Mr. Powell: As my right hon. Friend is leaving that point, would he be good enough to confirm a matter raised by an expression which fell from him? He referred to the stigma of deportation under this power as being permanent. I wonder whether he would confirm and thus put on the record a point made to me by the Minister of State arising out of a debate in Committee, namely, that when a person who is deported under the age of 18 reaches the age of 18 the deportation order thereupon ceases to have effect and is void in relation to that person. I thought that this might be an appropriate point for him to put that on the record if I have correctly apprehended him.

Mr. Maudling: I think that my right hon. Friend is correct on that, but if there is any chance that he is incorrect I will let him know later. I was following what the hon. and learned Member had said about the serious nature of deportation and contrasting that with people leaving voluntarily.
I turn now to appeals. This was discussed in great detail in Committee, the point being that these are individual


cases of family circumstances where decisions are hard to make and where different circumstances have to be taken into account and judged. I used the argument then, and I think that it was a good one, that on the whole the sort of administration we get from the Home Department is and has been over many years, humane and enlightened. The Home Department is well equipped to take such decisions.
I have been thinking further about this, however, and I recognise the strength of feeling. It is not a matter on which I want to have a division of opinion in the House if it can be avoided.
I have decided that what I would like to do is to introduce at a later stage—I am afraid that it will have to be in another place—the right of appeal. I will have to draft the wording. It will be a right of appeal in cases of family deportation, direct to the appeal tribunal. I am sorry that I cannot put an Amendment down today but it will take some drafting. I am willing to give that undertaking, to introduce a right of appeal in these cases at a later stage.

Mr. Bidwell: Those of us who are experienced in these affairs because of our deep involvement will be—not delighted, because we are not delighted about the Bill or anything arising from it—but at any rate we feel a sense of gratitude to the Home Secretary because of what he has just said. I cannot better the general moral argument put forward by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Dul-wich (Mr. S. C. Silkin), but I would like to draw the attention of the House to difficulties that can arise and which I am sure will be sorted out under the appeals machinery.
There is this new concept of patrialty whereby part of a family will be deportable and part of the family non-deport-able. We could have a situation where there were six children in a family, half of whom, or an even greater number, were born in this country and therefore have automatically acquired the status of patrialty. The Home Secretary has no statutory rights to deport those children.
It may happen that circumstances will arise when it would be preferable, if the breadwinner is leaving the country, that

his patrial and non-patrial children should go with him. If there was a sense of family unity, if the children were young enough, no doubt that is what would happen. It is precisely because of that that I am delighted that the right hon. Gentleman has promised some appeals machinery. It would be specifically that kind of entanglement which could become disentangled in the process of an appeals procedure.

Mr. Arthur Davidson: Like my hon. Friend the Member for Southall (Mr. Bidwell), I, too, if not delighted, am exceptionally pleased—I do not know which is the better or the worse—that the Home Secretary has announced today that he is considering a right of appeal in family deportation cases. If he has done nothing else he has ensured that speeches from this side of the House will be considerably shorter than otherwise they would have been, and I am sure that it will be a merciful relief for him not to have to listen to such lengthy speeches as were made in Committee on this point.
The whole concept of family deportation is by its very nature an objectionable one, because we would be deporting from this country, and acting in an arbitrary way against, people who themselves had committed no offence at all, who themselves had not offended in any way against this country and whose only offence is that they happen to be members of the same family as that of the deportee who himself, presumably, committed some sort of offence.
I have never understood why the Home Secretary stood so rigidly and firmly against appeal in this sort of case. Even the lullaby, low-temperature style of the Home Secretary was not able to convince hon. Members that what is basically an inhumane measure is somehow humane. When he was talking about family deportation and no stigma attached to it he made it seem so attractive that I was positively aching to be supported by the Home Secretary and feeling that it was some sort of advancement of my career. I am sorry that that will no longer take place and that the appeal procedure which he proposes will prevent that from taking its natural course! However, all of us on this side of the House are most grateful to the Home Secretary for giving way on this point,


and I do not think it right to detain the House any longer.

Mr. Kaufman: My hon. Friends can thank the Home Secretary for pausing to take breath while beating his wife. I contend that he ought not to be beating his wife at all and that this Clause ought not to be in the Bill at all, and that some of the Amendments which my hon. Friends have proposed are still very important, because anomalies arise and those anomalies will not otherwise be dealt with at this present stage.
The Home Secretary appeared slightly puzzled when he said that this age limit was based upon Canadian law and some of us said "So what?" He said that he thought that we might be interested to know. If he is to be so informative as that, one would hope that at an appropriate moment during this stage of the Bill he will tell us what parts of the Bill are based on the laws of Nazi Germany—as the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell) pointed out on Second Reading—and which parts of the Bill are based on those of South Africa.

Mr. Maudling: As I am sure the hon. Member is genuinely seeking information, let me tell him that no part of this Bill has anything to do with the laws of Nazi Germany.

Mr. Kaufman: I refer the Home Secretary to his right hon. Friend's exceptionally powerful speech on Second Reading, a speech which convinced me if not him.
There are anomalies with regard to this subsection and the subsection which follows, and I trust the Home Secretary will clear them up if he is really to allay our fears. The age limit is a very important one, because if it is not lower than 18 we could be placed in a situation of exceptional anomaly. Subsection (6) says:
Without prejudice to the operation of subsection (5) above, a person who is not patrial shall also be liable to deportation from the United Kingdom if, after he has attained the age of seventeen, he is convicted of an offence …
That means that a 17-year-old person is liable to be deported; but he is regarded as a member of a family till he is 18. Therefore, as I understand it, and interpret

it—and I shall be very grateful to be corrected if I am wrong—it will be possible, if someone aged between 17 and 18 has committed a deportable offence, for his brothers and sisters and parents to be deported along with him. I shall be grateful to the Home Secretary if he can tell me that this is not so. I cannot find that it is not so. If it is so, it is clearly intolerable, and verbal assurances in this House would make it no more tolerable. I hope that, for that reason alone, we will vote on it.
Then there is a second thing. In answer to my hon. Friend for Wolverhampton, North-East (Mrs. Renée Short)—and this has been referred to again today by my hon. Friend the Member for Southall—it has been said that it is possible for a non-patrial parent to have a patrial child. It has been confirmed in this House, in answer to a Question by my hon. Friend, that a non-patrial woman who has a child here has a child which becomes automatically patrial. I think that the significance of this has not been fully understood. In the normal biological course of events it is possible for a non-patrial to come into this country on a one-year ticket of leave and, during that one year, for his wife to give birth to a child who is a patrial and who will be a patrial if he is sent home at the end of that year.
6.45 p.m.
We could have a situation in which we could have a non-patrial father and a non-patrial mother who are deported or who are ordered to be deported and who have here in this country a child, an infant child, a babe in arms, only months old, unable to speak, who is patrial and not liable to deportation.

Dame Patricia Hornsby-Smith: Would the hon. Gentleman not agree that this is a problem we have had to deal with throughout immigration control and, with refugees who came here and whose children were born here? Some have been naturalised. It is not a new problem.

Mr. Kaufman: Of course, the right hon. Lady is perfectly right about that, but the right hon. Lady does not, perhaps, remember that there were refugees who fled from oppression in their countries, were liable to deportation, and


that, and in any case, we are not dealing with a refugee Clause but a deportation Clause. That is why I am concerned about it.
We could have that situation—of an infant child, only several months old, not liable to deportation. Would it be possible for the parents of that child, prior to their deportation, to say, "We are not going to have our child deported. We are not going to take our child with us. The child has a right to be here. Since it cannot speak for itself we are speaking for it, and we are going to leave it here"? The Home Secretary spoke about the horrors of children being a charge on the State. Here is a child who would be a charge on the State—a child left here under this ludicrous and anomalous provision. I should like an explanation of what would happen. Who would care for the child if his parents left him here, as they have a right to do?
Although the Home Secretary has made a concession and we are grateful for his concession, I trust that it will be agreed, in the context of the total unacceptability of the Bill and of the Clause, that, even in the light of the concession, the Home Secretary ought to tell us, when he replies to this debate, just how he will deal with the two particular anomalies which I have spoken about.

Mr. Clinton Davis: My hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Ardwick (Mr. Kaufman) has made a point of great force. I suppose that we are expected to be eternally grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for the concession which he has made, but the fact remains that this is an odious concept which should never have appeared in the Bill in the first place. Hardly anything has caused more disquiet amongst those who are actively concerned with community relations than family deportation. The fact that there will be a right of appeal against the decision to someone more independent than the Home Secretary is useful but, nevertheless, the concept of family deportation is still one which will cause grave disquiet amongst the immigrant community.
In Committee, the Home Secretary referred to "supervised departure" instead of deportation, but this euphemism does

not carry much weight. It does not cure the evil. If a person does not want to go, he will be made to go. Whether it is called deportation or supervised departure does not matter, the effect is the same, although to some extent the stigma is reduced.
Is it intended that the right of appeal should apply to all persons, whether they are here at the time the Bill comes into force, or whether they enter the country later? The Secretary of State drew distinctions of that character in respect of other matters where concessions were made in Committee. I hope that it is to be a right of appeal to all persons who fall into this category.
The proposition advanced by the Home Secretary this afternoon runs completely counter to everything he has said in this regard in Committee, and no doubt about other matters relating to appeals. He said that certain matters were not justiciable. Perhaps he will now reconsider the whole argument. If this is now to be a justiciable matter, whereas it was not justiciable before, perhaps the other matters to which he referred in Committee will now become justiciable. That was always a patently nonsensical argument, and it took us hours of pummelling away at the Home Secretary to make him see reason—eventually with some degree of success.
I am not quite so carried away as my hon. Friend the Member for Southall (Mr. Bidwell), who was delighted and elated by the concession. I do not think that it is anything to be elated about. It should have been granted in the first instance in Committee. The right hon. Gentleman should have seen the force of the argument but, much more importantly, I hope that he will see the force of the argument about the whole evil design of family deportation, which has nothing to recommend it and should be no part of the Bill.

Mr. Bidwell: I am horrified at the concept of family deportation, but I suggest to my hon. Friend that this is a way by which people can be made aware of this horrific concept. So it is a matter of some pleasure to me if my hon. Friend does not feel so elated about the concession as I do.

Mr. Davis: I did not understand precisely how the concession


affected my hon. Friend's thinking on this. I am not elated or delighted, and I do not congratulate the right hon. Gentleman. He does not deserve congratulations. He has just happened, perhaps by chance, to listen to some degree of reason from this side of the House, but the horrific concept of family deportation is not cured.

Mrs. Doris Fisher: I follow the sentiments of my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney, Central (Mr. Clinton Davis). Family deportation is a serious matter, especially in a forward-looking country like Great Britain where facilities are available to enable women to pursue in their own right trades and professions and to be successful in them. The original decision of the Home Secretary, that a woman who was able to maintain her children would have to leave the country if her husband were deported for a misdemeanour, even though husband and wife might have parted many months ago, was a hard one. At last the Home Secretary has seen reason on this.
Many children have to be taken into the care of the local authority for a variety of reasons. One reason is that the parent is not a fit person to care for the child. The law provides that these children should be taken care of through child welfare associations and other organisations. Similarly, there are immigrants who are not good parents and whose children are taken from them and put into the care of the local authority. Does the Home Secretary envisage that a local authority will be able to make an appeal on behalf of such a child who is taken into care? I fully understand that the child is a charge upon the State, but on grounds of humanity, it having been decided that the parent is not a fit person to look after the child, is it desirable that the child should be deported with the father?

Mr. Maudling: If I may briefly reply to the debate, the tone of the hon. Members for Manchester, Ardwick (Mr. Kaufman) and Hackney, Central (Mr. Clinton Davis) almost tempts me to say that I am not encouraged to make what are called concessions to the other side of the House. But I do not regard myself as making a concession. That is not the right way of going about these things, nor do I propose changes to the Bill to

earn the congratulations of hon. Members. I propose changes to the Bill if I am persuaded by the arguments, and if, as in this case, I am persuaded to act as much as possible in the interests of the people concerned. That is why I have agreed to introduce a provision for appeal.
The hon. Member for Ardwick spoke about the brother of someone committing an offence being deported. The answer is in Clause 5(4) and (5).

Mr. Kaufman: I am sorry, but I do not find the answer there. I found my question there. I should be grateful if the right hon. Gentleman would elaborate on this.

Mr. Maudling: Family deportation is for people who belong to a family. A family consists of a man, his wife and his children. There is nothing about brothers there. If the hon. Gentleman studies those subsections, he will find that what I say is right.
7.0 p.m.
I come next to the important question raised by the hon. Member for Hackney, Central: does this apply only to people already here or to everyone? It will apply to everyone. There is no distinction between people here now and those coming later.
I turn to the question of individual cases raised today by the hon. Members for Hackney, Central, and for Southall (Mr. Bidwell) and by the hon. Lady the Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Mrs. Doris Fisher). There will be individual cases in which, clearly, it would be wrong to think of deporting people, for example, the case of a small baby who might be left behind if the parents were sent back or the case of the wife who can stay and support herself and her children; in those cases, certainly not.
We discussed this difficulty in Committee. There will be cases in which it will be right to insist upon people going and there will be others in which it will not. The argument was about who should make the decision. I said in Committee that I thought that it should be for the Home Secretary of the day, and I still think that there is a respectable argument for that. However, in view of the weight of opinion on these matters, I am prepared to say that these decisions,


which must be made—when a man is deported, family problems do arise, and one must do the right thing—should go to the tribunal. No doubt, when the tribunal is considering such questions, anything which a local authority might have to say would very much weigh with it.
I think that that is the right way to deal with the difficult cases which will arise, as far as we can, in the interests of all the individuals concerned.

Mr. Merlyn Rees: In Committee, we argued that this method of dealing with families arose because of the change from employment vouchers to work permits, since under employment vouchers families had a stautory right of entry. As the right hon. Gentleman was speaking, I reached my own past experience and I must say that I cannot recall much precisely on this point. Are there many aliens who leave their families behind if they are deported? There is no stautory right for aliens under the existing law. Are there many examples, or is it that the Home Secretary is not so much concerned with what happens in regard to a small number of aliens but is expecting a larger problem with Commonwealth citizens?
There is deportation of Commonwealth citizens now. Is there a large number of Commonwealth citizens going home and leaving their families here? One imagines that among Asians, who have a powerful sense of family group, the families would go with them anyway. Is there any evidence on which the Home Secretary is working?

Mr. Maudling: This is not a new problem arising out of the Bill. There are cases of aliens and Irish and Commonwealth people at present. This is to deal with a problem of which we have knowledge and experience, not a problem which arises because of the new immigration system under the Bill.

Mr. S. C. Silkin: We welcome what the right hon. Gentleman has done. He says that he is not making a concession, and I accept that, but he has acceded to the substantial arguments which we put in Committee to the effect that there ought to be an independent right of appeal in matters of this kind if one is to have the concept of family deportation at all.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney, Central (Mr. Clinton Davis) pointed out, in informing us of his decision the right hon. Gentleman is resiling from the powerful arguments which he advanced in Committee when he took the view that these matters were not, as he put it, justiciable matters but were matters for the Executive, matters to be raised by Members of Parliament, and that the system which he then upheld was perfectly sound.
Speaking for myself, having heard what the right hon. Gentleman had to say today in announcing his decision, I wondered why we had to have an argument for an hour and a half last night when the right hon. Gentleman did not have a single friend in the House, being surrounded by those who took a view entirely different from his on this very question in relation to the political side of
conducive to the public good".

Mr. Charles Fletcher-Cooke: It was a good point, but it was quite different from the point on which we are now.

Mr. Silkin: The hon. and learned Gentleman was not here when I opened this debate and spoke about the right hon. Gentleman's phobia about tribunals. I am glad that he has now resiled a little from it, and I am led to hope that, perhaps, he may succumb to the eloquence of his hon. and learned Friend last night when he has had time to think about it, just as he succumbed to our eloquence in Committee after he had time to think about that.
However, having heard the right hon. Gentleman's reply and the whole of this debate, I remain unconvinced that the power of family deportation is a necessary power for one to have, bearing in mind how distasteful it is and how many people both inside and outside the House regard it as utterly objectionable.
My hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Ardwick (Mr. Kaufman) raised again the point which was made very forcibly in Committee about the anomalies which will result—for example, the patrial child who will not be liable to deportation—heaven knows what may happen to him—while his non-patrial brother will be liable to deportation. If


there are these families about which the right hon. Gentleman spoke in which a person to be deported decamps and leaves his family as a charge on the community, we shall, apparently, if the Clause remains, have a situation in which the patrial child will stay here to be a charge on the community and his elder or younger bother who is non-patrial will be deported. What greater nonsense could one have than that?
The right hon. Gentleman said that the number of cases was small. In reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, South (Mr. Merlyn Rees), he said, as I understood him, that it was not expected that there would be any special new problem arising out of the Bill; it was a problem which had always existed. As far as our knowledge on this side of the House goes of the number of cases in which this problem has arisen in the past, my hon. Friend can think of none at all. No doubt, there will be the occasional marginal case, but in the vast majority people who are to be deported will want

to take their families with them. They will not want to leave them behind unless those families are already independent, separated from them, or earning their own living—the very sort of case in which, under the appeal procedure which the right hon. Gentleman has now announced, they will probably make good their case for remaining here in any event.

So what is the purpose of this new provision introduced by the right hon. Gentleman in his Bill? What is there that is so important that it outweighs the distasteful nature of this provision which has caused so much offence both in the House and outside? The right hon. Gentleman has not explained that either here or in Committee. In the circumstances, I cannot but invite my right hon. and hon. Friends to divide on the Amendment.

Question put. That the Amendment be made:—

The House divided: Ayes 155, Noes 186.

Division No. 378.]
AYES
[7.8 p.m.


Albu, Austen
Faulds, Andrew
[...] Kenneth


Allaun, Frank (Salford, E.)
Fisher, Mrs. Doris (B'ham, Ladywood)
Lyon. Alexander W. (York)


Archer, Peter (Rowley Regis)
Fitch, Alan (Wigan)
McBride, Neil


Armstrong, Ernest
Fletcher, Ted (Darlington)
McCartney, Hugh


Ashton, Joe
Foley, Maurice
McElhone, Frank


Barnett, Joel
Fraser, John (Norwood)
McGuire, Michael


Beaney, Alan
Gilbert, Dr. John
Mahon, Simon (Bootle)


Bidwell, Sydney
Ginsburg, David
Marks, Kenneth


Bishop, E. S.
Gourlay, Harry
Marquand, David


Boardman, H. (Leigh)
Grant, George (Morpeth)
Marsden, F.


Booth, Albert
Grant, John D. (Islington, E.)
Marshall Dr. Edmund


Bottomley, Rt. Hn. Arthur
Griffiths, Eddie (Brightside)
Mason, Rt. Hn. Roy


Buchan, Norman
Hamilton, James (Bothwell)
Meacher, Michael


Buchanan, Richard (G'gow, Sp'burn)
Hamilton, William (Fife, W.)
Millan, Bruce


Callaghan, Rt. Hn. James
Hamling, William
Milne, Edward (Blyth)


Campbell, I. (Dunbartonshire, w.)
Hannan, William (G'gow, Maryhill)
Morgan, Elystan (Cardiganshire)


Carter, Ray (Birmingh'm, Northfield)
Hardy, Peter
Morris, Charles R. (Openshaw)


Carter-Jones, Lewis (Eccles)
Harper, Joseph
Murray, Ronald King


Clark, David (Colne Valley)
Harrison, Walter (Wakefield)
Ogden, Eric


Cocks, Michael (Bristol, S.)
Horam, John
O'Halloran, Michael


Cohen, Stanley
Houghton, Rt. Hn. Douglas
O'Malley, Brian


Corbet, Mrs. Freda
Hughes, Rt. Hn. Cledwyn (Anglesey)
Orme, Stanley


Cox, Thomas (Wandsworth, C.)
Hughes, Mark (Durham)
Oswald, Thomas


Crawshaw, Richard
Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen, N.)
Parry, Robert (Liverpool, Exchange)


Crosland, Rt. Hn. Anthony
Hughes, Roy (Newport)
Pavitt, Laurie


Cunningham, G. (Islington, S. W.)
Janner, Greville
Pendry, Tom


Dalyell, Tam
Jenkins, Rt. Hn. Roy (Stechford)
Pentland, Norman


Davidson, Arthur
John, Brynmor
Perry, Ernest G.


Davies, Derail (Llanelly)
Johnson, Walter (Derby, S.)
Prescott, John


Davies, G. Elfed (Rhondda, E.)
Jones, Dan (Burnley)
Price, J. T. (Westhoughton)


Davies, Ifor (Gower)
Jones, Rt. Hn. Sir Elwyn (W. Hani, S.)
Price, William (Rugby)


Davies, S. O. (Merthyr Tydvil)
Jones, Gwynoro (Carmarthen)
Rankin, John


Davis, Clinton (Hackney, C.)
Jones, T. Alec (Rhondda, W.)
Rees, Merlyn (Leeds, S.)


Davis, Terry (Bromsgrove)
Kaufman, Gerald
Roberts, Albert (Normanton)


Dell, Rt. Hn. Edmund
Kinnock, Neil
Roberts, Rt. Hn. Goronwy (Caernarvon)


Dempsey, James
Lamond, James
Roderick, Cacrwyn E. (Br'c'n &amp; R'dnor)


Doig, Peter
Latham, Arthur
Roper, John


Dormand, J. D.
Lawson, George
Ross, Rt. Hn. William (Kilmarnock)


Douglas, Dick (Stirlingshire, E.)
Leadbitter, Ted
Sheldon, Robert (Ashton-under-Lyne)


Duffy, A. E. P.
Leonard, Dick
Shore, Rt. Hn. Peter (Stepney)


Dunnett, Jack
Lestor, Miss Joan
Short, Rt. Hn. Edward (N'c'tle-u-Tyne)


Edwards, Robert (Bilston)
Lewis, Arthur (W. Ham N.)
Short, Mrs. Renée (W'hampton, N. E.)


Edwards, William (Merioneth)
Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)
Silkin, Hn. S. C. (Dulwich)


Evans, Fred
Lipton, Marcus
Sillars, James




Silverman, Julius
Swain, Thomas
Whitehead, Phillip


Skinner, Dennis
Taverne, Dick
Willey, Rt. Hn. Frederick


Small, William
Thomas, Rt. Hn. George (Cardiff, W.)
Williams, W. T. (Warrington)


Smith, John (Lanarkshire, N.)
Thomson, Rt. Hn. G. (Dundee, E.)
Wilson, Rt. Hn. Harold (Huyton)


Spearing, Nigel
Tomney, Frank
Woof, Robert


Spriggs, Leslie
Tomey, Tom



Stallard, A. W.
Urwin, T. W.
TELLERS FOR THE AYES:


Steel, David
Weitzman, David
Mr. John Golding and


Stonehouse, Rt. Hn. John
Wellbeloved, James
Mr. James Dunn.




NOES


Adley, Robert
Goodhart, Philip
Neave, Airey


Alison, Michael (Barkston Ash)
Goodhew, Victor
Normanton, Tom


Allason, James (Hemel Hempstead)
Gower, Raymond
Oppenheim, Mrs. Sally


Astor, John
Gray, Hamish
Osborn, John


Atkins, Humphrey
Green, Alan
Owen, Idris (Stockport, N.)


Awdry, Daniel
Griffiths, Eldon (Bury St. Edmunds)
Page, John (Harrow, W.)


Baker, Kenneth (St. Marylebone)
Gummer, Selwyn
Parkinson, Cecil (Enfield, W.)


Barber, Rt. Hn. Anthony
Hall, Miss Joan (Keighley)
Percival, Ian


Batsford, Brian
Harrison, Brian (Madlon)
Pounder, Rafton


Beamish, Col. Sir Tufton
Harrison, Col. Sir Harwood (Eye)
Powell, Rt. Hn. J. Enoch


Bennett, Dr. Reginald (Gosport)
Haselhurst, Alan
Proudfoot, Wilfred


Biffen, John
Hastings, Stephen
Pym, Rt. Hn. Francis


Biggs-Davison, John
Hicks, Robert
Quennell, Miss J. M.


Blaker, Peter
Higgins, Terence L.
Raison, Timothy


Boardman, Tom (Leicester, S. W.)
Hiley, Joseph
Ramsden, Rt. Hn. James


Boscawen, Robert
Hill, James (Southampton, Test)
Redmond, Robert


Bossom, Sir Clive
Holland, Philip
Reed, Laurance (Bolton, E.)


Bowden, Andrew
Holt, Miss Mary
Rhys Williams, Sir Brandon


Boyd-Carpenter, Rt. Hn. John
Hornby, Richard
Roberts, Michael (Cardiff, N.)


Bray, Ronald
Hornsby-Smith, Rt. Hn. Dame Patricia
Roberts, Wyn (Conway)


Brinton, Sir Tatton
Howe, Hn. Sir Geoffrey (Reigate)
Rossi, Hugh (Hornsey)


Bruce-Cardyne, J.
Howell, David (Cuildford)
Rost, Peter


Buchanan-Smith, Alick (Angus, N &amp; M)
Howell, Ralph (Norfolk, N.)
Royle, Anthony


Bullus, Sir Eric
Hunt, John
Russell, Sir Ronald


Burden, F. A.
Hutchison, Michael Clark
Scott, Nicholas


Butler, Adam (Bosworth)
Iremonger, T. L.
Sharples, Richard


Campbell, Rt. Hn. G.(Moray &amp; Narm)
James, David
Shaw, Michael (Sc'b'gh &amp; Whitby)


Carlisle, Mark
Jenkin, Patrick (Woodford)
Shelton, William (Clapham)


Channon, Paul
Jennings, J. C. (Burton)
Simeons, Charles


Chapman, Sydney
Jessel, Toby
Sinclair, Sir George


Chataway, Rt. Hn. Christopher
Kaberry, Sir Donald
Skeet, T. H. H.


Chichester-Clark, R.
King, Tom (Bridgwater)
Soref, Harold


Churchill, W. S.
Kinsey, J. R.
Speed, Keith


Clarke, Kenneth (Rushcliffe)
Knox, David
Spence, John


Clegg, Walter
Langford-Holt, Sir John
Sproat, Iain


Cooke, Robert
Legge-Bourke, Sir Harry
Stainton, Keith


Cooper, A. E.
Le Marchant, Spencer
Stewart-Smith, D. G. (Belper)


Cormack, Patrick
Loveridge, John
Stoddart-Scott, Col. Sir M.


Costain, A. P.
Luce, R. N.
Tapsell, Peter


Critchley, Julian
McAdden, Sir Stephen
Taylor, Edward M. (G'gow, Cathcart)


Crouch, David
MacArthur, Ian
Taylor, Robert (Croydon, N. W.)


Dean, Paul
McCrindle, R. A.
Tebbit, Norman


Deedes, Rt. Hn. W. F.
McLaren, Martin
Temple, John M.


Dixon, Piers
McMaster, Stanley
Thomas, John Stradling (Monmouth)


du Cann, Rt. Hn. Edward
Macmillan, Maurice (Farnham)
Trafford, Dr. Anthony


Dykes, Hugh
McNair-Wilson, Michael
Tugendhat, Christopher


Edwards, Nicholas (Pembroke)
Maginnis, John E.
Turton, Rt. Hn. Sir Robin


Elliot, Capt. Walter (Carshalton)
Mather, Carol
Vaughan, Dr. Gerard


Elliott, R. W. (N'c'tlie-upon-Tyne. N.)
Maude, Angus
Waddington, David


Eyre, Reginald
Maudling, Rt. Hn. Reginald
Walder, David (Clitheroe)


Farr, John
Mawby, Ray
Walker-Smith, Rt. Hn. Sir Derek


Fell, Anthony
Maxwell-Hyslop, R. J.
Wall, Patrick


Fermer, Mrs. Peggy
Meyer, Sir Anthony
Ward, Dame Irene


Fidler, Michael
Mills, Peter (Torrington)
White, Roger (Gravesend)


Fisher, Nigel (Surbiton)
Moate, Roger
Wilkinson, John


Fletcher-Cooke, Charles
Molyneaux, James
Wolrige-Gordon, Patrick


Fookes, Miss Janet
Money, Ernie
Wood, Rt. Hn. Richard


Fortescue, Tim
Monks, Mrs. Connie
Wylie, Rt. Hn. N. R.


Fowler, Norman
Montgomery, Fergus
Younger, Hn. George


Fox, Marcus
Morgan-Giles, Rear-Adm.



Fraser. Rt. Hn. HughCSt'lTord &amp; Stone)
Morgan, Geraint (Denbigh)
TELLERS FOR THE NOES:


Gardner, Edward
Mudd, David
Mr. Hector Monro and


Gibson-Watt, David
Murton, Oscar
Mr. Paul Hawkins.


Glyn, Dr. Alan

Mr. Mandling: I beg to move Amendment No. 20, in line 25 after 'is', insert 'or has been'.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Miss Harvie Anderson): I hope that with this Amendment it will be convenient to take also Amendments Nos. 27, 93 and 51.

7.15 p.m.

Mr. Maudling: This small group of Amendments is necessary to carry out the undertaking I gave in Committee that families would always be given the option of voluntary departure. Clause 5(3) says:
Where a person is to be deported as belonging to the family of another person, the deportation order made against him shall be included in the same instrument as that made against the other person …".
That is not consistent with giving people the option of going in their own time and of their own volition. It will no longer be the case that there will have to be a deportation order against all members of the family. The provision will now be omitted, in accordance with the undertaking I gave in Committee. I thought it reasonable to put in a time limit so that people should not be left in doubt indefinitely. So if, after eight weeks, the Home Secretary has not decided to make an order, the power will lapse.

Mr. Peter Archer: I thought when I read this group of Amendments that the right hon. Gentleman had in mind carrying out the undertaking which he gave in Committee. But I confess that the wording of Amendment No. 27 has rather foxed me. I should have expected not a maximum but a minimum time if that had been the intention.
I was never greatly enamoured about the concept of supervised departure for those whose only guilt lay in their association with relations. In Committee the Home Secretary explained that he wanted, if possible, to avoid the stigma of deportation. We must accept that, so far as it goes, supervised departure is an improvement on deportation. However, it seems less than hospitable to say to someone who, by definition, has not in any way offended, "We do not want to deport you, but we think that you ought to go. You may go voluntarily, but, if you do not, you will go anyway." I ventured to ask in Committee whether there was a social distinction between being bounced from the Royal Enclosure and being politely asked to leave. We must at this stage accept what the right hon. Gentleman offers. Perhaps we should be duly grateful for miniscule mercies.
I should like to know more about the way that it is proposed to operate this procedure. For example, is it proposed

that the family will be approached by letter, or will it be approached by an official who will explain these matters? It may be that we shall be dealing with people who are unable to read. Will their departure be financed? If so, from where will the money come?
Our main problem has been to understand the purpose of the time limit in this respect. We accept that there ought to be a time limit after which members of families are not liable to deportation. They should not have this possibility hanging over their heads indefinitely. The problem seems to arise in marrying this concept with the purpose which the right hon. Gentleman explained to the House. If it is proposed that these people shall be given this option, then in practice time must be permitted to approach them, to explain the situation, to give them time to make their election and to make arrangements for the financial provision. These matters cannot be dealt with quickly.
The purpose of Opposition Amendment No. 93 is to achieve both results. We have sought to provide a minimum period so that time is given for a supervised departure, and we are also seeking to provide a maximum period, which is what the right hon. Gentleman now has in mind. Admittedly, our maximum period is longer than his. If we accept the necessity for a minimum period, clearly there has to be a longer maximum period.
The issue between the two Amendments is simple and I shall not take up time elaborating it. It may be that, on reflection, the right hon. Gentleman will agree that the distinction between the Amendments is not so great and that in practice we have a good point. If he does not agree, I suspect that the time may come when some of his harassed officials, not to mention those who advise immigrants, will be asking why he did not accept our Amendment while there was still time. I shall be glad to hear what the right hon. Gentleman has to say about this matter, and on that the House will decide accordingly.

Mr. Maudling: First, on finance. If people are deported there is provision for the payment of their fares. If they depart under voluntary supervision, I


think that finance could be arranged under Clause 29.
Secondly, on notification, we shall have to ensure that people are properly notified that they will or are likely to be deported. The fact that there is to be a right of appeal is the answer to the point about a minimum time limit. I have undertaken that all will be given the opportunity of going voluntarily if they are prepared to do so. Also, now that there is to be a right of appeal in each case there can be no question of hustling them out of the country.

Mr. S. C. Silkin: Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that, on reflection, the giving of the right of appeal may alter the whole concept of the timetable which he has proposed? Does he not therefore think it desirable that he should think again about that matter in the context of the right of appeal?

Mr. Maudling: I am prepared to do that. At a later stage I shall be proposing an Amendment on the right of appeal, but I will consider that point. Now that there is to be a right of appeal there is less need for a minimum time, but we must have a maximum time. People must not be kept in uncertainty for an indefinite period. I am trying to help people in this situation by saying that if the Home Secretary does not act in a certain time then it is all right.
I hope that I have persuaded the hon. and learned Gentleman that, with the background of a right of appeal, I am carrying out my undertaking that no one will in any circumstances be forced to leave without the option of going in his own right and that he will be able to claim financial assistance.

Amendment agreed to.

Mr. S. C. Silkin: I beg to move Amendment No. 24, in page 5, line 14, at end insert:
(10) Subject to the following provisions of this section the power under this Act to refuse leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom shall not be exercised in the case of any person who satisfies an immigration officer or the Secretary of State, as the case may be—

(a) that he or she is the husband, wife or child under 16 years of age of another person who is a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies or a Commonwealth citizen in this section referred to as "the other person'); and

(b) either—

(i) that the other person is a person then lawfully resident in the United Kingdom or Islands; or
(ii) that the other person is a person (not being one who is on that occasion refused leave to enter the United Kingdom) with whom he or she enters or seeks to enter the United Kingdom.

(11) Where the other person has been or is given limited leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom, any person who by virtue of subsection (10) above is given leave to enter or remain therein shall be given leave similarly limited; and any limitation on that person's leave shall be varied if and to the extent that the limitation on the other person's leave is varied; and that person's leave shall lapse if the other person's leave shall lapse.
(12) Nothing in subsections (10) and (II) above shall operate to prevent the giving otherwise than by virtue of those subsections of leave to any person to enter or remain in the United Kingdom, whether for a limited or for an indefinite period, or to prevent any person from entering or remaining therein without leave if he is entitled so to do; and nothing in those subsections shall derogate from subsections (5) and (6) of this section or from subsection (5) of section 13 of this Act.
There have already been two debates which, in a sense, were connected with the subject matter of the Amendment. In the first debate we discussed the right of a wife to patriality. We were informed, and were glad to hear, that the Government were thinking again in terms similar to those which we put forward. The purpose of giving a wife the right of patriality through her husband was to enable her to stay in this country on the same terms as her husband.
The second debate which impinged on this matter concerned the rules and how they should be authenticated by this House. On that occasion the right hon. Gentleman's view, that it was sufficient that the rules should be subject to the negative procedure, prevailed in the Division Lobbies.
The Amendment seeks to deal with a problem rather wider than the patriality of a wife. It deals with the position of people holding either United Kingdom or Commonwealth passports who are already in this country or are allowed to enter. I pointed out in an intervention in the earlier debate about the rules that, under the 1962 Act, specific statutory provisions deal with these rights. However, there are no similar provisions in the Bill; they are all in the draft rules. It seems as though Government have a phobia about


incorporating substantitive rights in legislation—just as they appeared at one time to have, but now to a diminishing extent, a phobia about giving responsibility to independent tribunals—certainly insofar as it relates to some of the major issues of fact and discretion.
7.30 p.m.
We are dealing with a major issue. During the election campaign the Prime Minister recognised that the right of a family to be with the breadwinner was an issue of great moment. Keeping the family together is the whole purpose of taking every reasonable measure that one can to provide against the break-up of the family as a result of a separation. When the Conservative Party was in Government before it accepted, in the 1962 Act, the principle that a spouse—husband or wife—and the children should have a right to come in and join an immigrant here but, for reasons which have never been apparent to me, they shrink from inserting that right in the Bill.
We appreciate that the situation is not identical to that under the 1962 Act. The provisions of the Bill are different, and therefore one has to provide for things in a different way. Taking all that into account, we have taken the language used by the Conservative Party in the Commonwealth Immigrants Act, 1962, and adapted it, as far as is consistent with the provisions of this Bill, so that the two Measures are married, one with the other.
In doing that we have followed what the Conservative Party did in the 1962 Act in giving a statutory right to a husband, a wife, or a child under 16, to join, or come in with, a person who was given leave to enter this country, to be with him during the period of his stay here if it is a temporary leave, and to go when he goes, subject, always, to the right of someone, having come here, to apply to be considered separately from the person with whom he came, and to be given leave to stay in his own right. That is an obvious qualification that one has to make.
Subject to that kind of qualification, we have sought to provide that where a breadwinner comes for a year, and then leaves, his family will come for a year, and leave with him. If the breadwinner's leave is extended for a further period of three years, we say that his family's

leave shall be similarly extended. If the breadwinner is allowed to remain after the four-year period—and we are told that that will be the normal and natural thing when someone has been allowed to stay for that long on a work permit—we say that his family should be allowed to stay permanently with him.
If the breadwinner's leave lapses by virtue of the provisions of the Bill, or if his leave is varied—there is provision in the Bill to vary it—then, similarly, the leave of his family will lapse or be varied, except in the case that I have mentioned of a child, for example, having a right to say that he shall be treated independently because he has a job and is independent of his parents. That is the kind of case that we were dealing with under the deportation provisions, where a right to appeal is apparently to be given in similar circumstances.
It may be that we shall be told, as we were told in Committee, that the principle behind our Amendment is one to which the Government have every intention of giving effect under the rules. The point to bear in mind is that what we are doing here affects the rights of individuals. The whole matter is to be dealt with by the negative procedure, which means that we shall not necessarily have an opportunity to debate what is being done. Indeed, even if the affirmative procedure were adopted it would be extremely difficult to debate the rules in detail, because one cannot table Amendments to them.
I do not suggest that in following the provisions of the 1962 Act and seeking them to adapt them to the provisions of this Bill the draftsmanship of the 25 lines of the Amendment is perfect but, if this kind of provision is in the Bill, it can be amended. If the Government do not like this provision in its present form, they can put down a suitable Amendment in another place. That cannot be done with the rules, and it seems to me right and proper that a right of this importance should remain a statutory right. It is a right upon which will depend the happiness and unity of many families.
It seems to me that if the Prime Minister is to give effect to what he was saying about these matters during the General Election campaign it would be wrong to leave this matter to be dealt


with by rules. This right should be enshrined in the Bill. That is what the Amendment seeks to do, and I hope that the Government will accept the principle that what they did in the 1962 Act should properly be done in this Bill.

Mr. Sharples: Perhaps I might refer, first, to the common ground between us. I think it is common ground between the two sides of the House that a person coming to this country should, wherever possible, be able to be accompanied by his wife and dependent children. The difference between the two sides of the House lies in whether that right should be enshrined in the Bill, or contained in the rules which, as a result of Amendments moved by my right hon. Friend, are to be subject to the negative procedure.
Before coming to the substance of the matter, there are two points that I should like to make on the drafting of the Amendment. I make nothing of the first but I do make something of the second. I am sure that the first is simply an error in the drafting, in that it benefits a wife and children who are themselves aliens, provided that the husband or parent is a Commonwealth citizen. There are very few such people, and I do not suppose that it was the intention of the hon. and learned Member for Dulwich (Mr. S. C. Silkin), who probably drafted the Amendment, to include them.
Much more important—and this illustrates the difficulty about putting a provision of this kind into legislation—is the fact that the Amendment would entitle a child under 16 to enter with, or join, only one parent. The 1968 Act, which was passed by the Labour Party when in Government, was designed to remedy that situation, and I shall have something more to say about that in a few moments.
This illustrates in some respects the difficulties and dangers of putting this in statutory form. As I said, there is nothing between us on the desire that, when a person comes here for settlement or even for a much more limited time, he should be joined by his wife and dependent children. We both believe that families should be kept together.
I made it clear in Committee that it was the policy of the Government to allow people lawfully entering the

country to be accompanied by or to be joined by their wives and young children, that the immigration rules would give effect to this policy and that, in their final form, the rules would not require immigrants already settled here to show that they could support their wives and children without recourse to public funds.
The argument between us is simply whether this should be in the rules or in the Bill. The hon. and learned Member for Dulwich referred to the precedent in the 1962 Act, and said that he had adapted those provisions to the present situation. One of the difficulties in that Act and one of the reasons for the change in our policy was that it was very easy for people seeking to come here to find loopholes in the law which could be exploited.
Section 2(2) of the Commonwealth Immigrants Act ensured the interests of family unity. It gave, as does the Amendment, a child under 16 the right to join either parent. This was exploited by boys, particularly, just under the age of 16, who came here to join their fathers, while their mothers and the remainder of their families remained in the country of origin.
One of the difficulties of inscribing this provision in statute was illustrated when this situation came to light. An International Social Service report on its London Airport project revealed the abuse in June, 1967, but it was not until nine months later that, with the cooperation of both sides of the House, it was possible to introduce legislation in order to put right a situation which was being deliberately exploited by large numbers of people, and which the right hon. Member for Cardiff, South-East (Mr. Callaghan), when Home Secretary, rightly thought had to be put right.
But even so, only because it was possible in the parliamentary time-table to introduce a Bill to deal with much wider issues was it possible to legislate to deal with this abuse. It was nine months before the amending legislation could be introduced, and in that time a very large number of the families of these youths were able to exploit the provisions of the Act.
It is largely for that reason—because the Government must have the right to make alterations in rules at short notice


to meet cases of exploitation similar to this—that we have tought it right that provisions which are, none the less, important, should be contained in the rules rather than in the Bill. That is why I must advise the House to reject the Amendment.

Mr. S. C. Silkin: The Minister's case is not founded upon the importance of the subject, which he recognises, or upon any difference between us on the merits of the matter, because he recognises the great desirability of enabling people who come here, even for a relatively short time, to have their families with them or to be joined by them. He pointed to certain defects in the drafting, which I accept. Indeed, I probably accepted these in advance. What I sought to do was to put down a provision which raised the principle whether a matter as important as this should be left to the rules, or whether it should, as was the case in the 1962 and 1968 Acts, be incorporated in the legislation.
That is the nub of the issue between us. As I understand the Minister's answer, his justification for putting this matter in rules which are intended to be simply administrative and which are not described in the Bill as providing substantive rights, is that, in the past, matters have arisen which it would have been desirable for Parliament to be able to deal with more quickly than it was able to do.
But it is now nearly a decade since the introduction of immigration control. We have had a vast amount of experience of it and we have found it necessary to make certain changes because of loopholes. The Minister mentioned a particular loophole which it was desirable to close. But surely, by now, the experience that we have gained must have resulted in our having sufficient knowledge to be able to say that the possible loopholes have been filled and that a Clause could be inserted in the Bill which would cover all the cases which one could reasonably expect to happen—including the case which had to be dealt with by the 1968 Act.
The Minister is saying that this matter is so open-ended that one should enable the Government to have a perpetual discretion to make new law, without any more parliamentary control than the nega

tive procedure. If one applied that principle generally, for example to taxation law, where one has the most glaring examples of loopholes—where people are employed for large sums of money for the express purpose of finding loopholes—one would soon find that virtually everything of importance in which a loophole was possible was being dealt with by rules and that the authority of Parliament and its power to improve legislation was diminishing and being eroded. That argument does not satisfy me that this is a matter which should not be within the Bill.
I accept that one must balance the convenience to the Executive of being able to make rapid changes against the importance of the subject matter with which one is dealing in the legislation. This is a matter of great importance, as the Minister recognises. It is a matter which up to now, both in the 1962 and 1968 Acts, it was thought right to deal with by way of legislation.
Even when the loophole was found which gave rise to the provision in the 1968 Act to which the Minister referred, the Government of the day did not deal with it by saying, in effect, "We will not have statutory provisions any longer. We will go over to a system of rules which will enable us to deal with any future loopholes as they arise". They did it by way of amendment to the 1962 Act, and they were perfectly right to do it that way.
The hon. Gentleman is putting too much weight in the scales in favour of the facility of the Executive and far too little in that which sustains the essential principle that when people have and are given rights, those rights should be enshrined in legislation that is capable of amendment and control directly by this House.
In these circumstances, if the Minister is not prepared to concede the principle of what we are seeking—I said we were not asking him to swallow the entirety of the drafting of the Amendment—and enshrine it in the Statute, I must ask my hon. Friends to support this principle by voting for it in the Lobby.

Mr. David Weitzman (Stoke Newington and Hackney, North): This is such an important point that although I had


the privilege of serving on the Committee, I must comment on it. I hope that the Government will think again on this issue, for, as the Minister said, there is no real difference between us. The only difference is that the Government say that this should be in the rules while we say that it is a principle of such strength that it should be enshrined in the Bill.
The reasoning of the Minister is that because it will be in the rules and because certain things occurred in the past, all will be well because the rules can be altered quickly. This is an important reason why the principle should be enshrined in the Bill, because we do not want it to be dealt with quickly. We want the principle established in the Bill so that if a query arises it will be dealt with by way of legislation and not simply by an alteration of the rules. I hope that the Minister will appreciate the importance of placing this principle within the Statute in view of the important rights of the individual that are involved.

Mr. Bidwell: At the outset of the Committee stage my hon. Friends tried to introduce what one might call a set of declared principles. They were basically designed to ensure that the provisions would be non-discriminatory on grounds of ethnic origin or colour.
At that stage it was argued by hon. Gentlemen opposite that there was no need for our proposal because what we had in mind was already laid down in statutory form in the Race Relations Act, 1968. On that score hon. Gentlemen opposite had a point, but in the case we are now discussing the same cannot be said. It is common knowledge in this case that there are pressures the other way, so to speak. Parts of the Bill are of a probationary character in their effect on Commonwealth citizens coming to work in this country. There is the provision for one year's probation, with a

second bite of three years' probation before permanent settlement can be achieved.

They are already under these pressures, and while there would not be a derogation of rights under certain rules concerning the bringing in of dependent relatives, there would at any rate be a considerable reduction in the incentive to bring in dependent relatives and so on until permanent settlement had been achieved. We have already pointed out the enormous difficulty involved at that early stage in obtaining credit and arranging mortgages.

A considerable body of opinion is growing over what I have previously described as the possible growth, as a result of the facility provided by the Bill, of coolie labour, and certainly virtually directed labour, mainly coloured. For this reason my hon. Friends are saying that it is not good enough to, as it were, stand this matter aside in rules. It is imperative that the principle be enshrined in the Bill so that it becomes a concept and aim.

If the Minister is prepared to accept the principle of the Amendment, as my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Dulwich (Mr. S. C. Silkin) pointed out, he would be asserting a position which I am sure he holds. He would be saying that he will have no truck with the sort of developments which could arise from the actions of certain employers, and perhaps certain members of his party.

We are here debating a declaration of principle which will be enshrined in any future legislation on this subject which a Labour Government introduce, for that legislation will be based on sound Socialist principles.

Question put, That the Amendment be made:—

The House divided: Ayes 155, Noes 185.

Division No. 379.]
AYES
[7.57 p.m.


Albu, Austen
Booth, Albert
Crosland, Rt. Hn. Anthony


Allaun, Frank (Salford, E.)
Buchan, Norman
Dalyell, Tam


Archer, Peter (Rowley Regis)
Buchanan, Richard (G'gow, Sp'burn)
Davidson, Arthur


Armstrong, Ernest
Callaghan, Rt. Hn. James
Davies, Denzil (Llanelly)


Ashton, Joe
Campbell, I. (Dunbartonshire, W.)
Davies, G. Elfed (Rhondda, E.)


Barnett, Joel
Carter, Ray (Birmingh'm, Northfield)
Davies, Ifor (Gower)


Beaney, Alan
Clark, David (Colne Valley)
Davies, S. O. (Merthyr Tydvil)


Bidwell, Sydney
Cocks, Michael (Bristol, S.)
Davis, Clinton (Hackney, C.)


Bishop, E. S.
Corbet, Mrs. Freda
Davis, Terry (Bromsgrove)


Boardman, H. (Leigh)
Crawshaw, Richard
Dell, Rt. Hn. Edmund




Dempsey, James
Kaufman, Gerald
Price, William (Rugby)


Doig, Peter
Kinnock, Neil
Rankin, John


Dormand, J. D.
Lamond, James
Rees, Merlyn (Leeds, S.)


Douglas, Dick (Stirlingshire, E.)
Latham, Arthur
Roberts, Albert (Normanton)


Douglas-Mann, Bruce
Lawson, George
Roberts, Rt. Hn. Goronwy (Caernarvon)


Duffy, A. E. P.
Leadbitter, Ted
Roderick, Caerwyn E. (Br'c'n &amp; R'dnor)


Dunn, James A.
Leonard, Dick
Rodgers, William (Stockton-on-Tees)


Dunnett, Jack
Lestor, Miss Joan
Roper, John


Edwards, Robert (Bilston)
Lewis, Arthur (W. Ham, N.)
Ross, Rt. Hn. William (Kilmamock)


Evans, Fred
Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)
Sheldon, Robert (Ashton-under-Lyne)


Faulds, Andrew
Lipton, Marcus
Shore, Rt. Hn. Peter (Stepney)


Fisher, Mrs. Doris (B'ham, Ladywood)
Lomas, Kenneth
Short, Rt. Hn. Edward (N'c'tle-u-Tyne)


Fitch, Alan (Wigan)
Lyon, Alexander W. (York)
Short, Mrs. Renée (W'hampton, N. E.)


Fletcher, Ted (Darlington)
McBride, Neil
Silkin, Hn. S. C. (Dulwich)


Foley, Maurice
McCartney, Hugh
Sillars, James


Fraser, John (Norwood)
McElhone, Frank
Silverman, Julius


Gilbert, Dr. John
McGuire, Michael
Skinner, Dennis


Ginsburg, David
McMillan, Tom (Glasgow, C.)
Small, William


Gourlay, Harry
Mahon, Simon (Bootle)
Smith, John (Lanarkshire, N.)


Grant, George (Morpeth)
Marks, Kenneth
Spearing, Nigel


Grant, John D. (Islington, E.)
Marquand, David
Spriggs, Leslie


Griffiths, Eddie (Brightside)
Marsden, F.
Steel, David


Crimond, Rt. Hn. J.
Marshall, Dr. Edmund
Stonehouse, Rt. Hn. John


Hamilton, William (Fife, E.)
Mason, Rt. Hn. Roy
Summerskill, Hn. Dr. Shirley


Hamling, William
Meacher, Michael
Swain, Thomas


Hardy, Peter
Millan, Bruce
Taverne, Dick


Harper, Joseph
Milne, Edward (Blyth)
Thomas, Rt. Hn. George (Cardiff, W.)


Harrison, Walter (Wakefield)
Morgan, Etystan (Cardiganshire)
Thomas, Jeffrey (Abertillery)


Horam, John
Morris, Charles R. (Openshaw)
Thomson, Rt. Hn. G. (Dundee, E.)


Houghton, Rt. Hn. Douglas
Morris, Rt. Hn. John (Aberavon)
Tomney, Frank


Hughes, Rt. Hn. Cledwyn (Anglesey)
Murray, Ronald King
Torney, Tom


Hughes, Mark (Durham)
Ogden, Eric
Urwin, T. W.


Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen, N.)
O'Halloran, Michael
Weitzman, David


Hughes, Roy (Newport)
O'Malley, Brian
Wellbeloved, James


Janner, Greville
Orme, Stanley
Whitehead, Philip


Jenkins, Rt. Hn. Roy (Stechford)
Oswald, Thomas
Willey, Rt. Hn. Frederick


John, Brynmor
Parry, Robert (Liverpool, Exchange)
Williams, W. T. (Warrington)


Johnson, James (K'ston-on-HuII, W.)
Pavitt, Laurie
Wilson, Rt. Hn. Harold (Huyton)


Johnson, Walter (Derby, S.)
Pendry, Tom
Woof, Robert


Jones, Dan (Burnley)
Pentland, Norman



Jones, Rt. Hn. Sir Elwyn (W. Ham, S.)
Perry, Ernest G.
TELLERS FOR THE AYES:


Jones, Gwynoro (Carmarthen)
Prescott, John
Mr. James Hamilton and


Jones, T. Alec (Rhondda, W.)
Price, J. T. (Westhoughton)
Mr. John Golding.




NOES


Adley, Robert
Critchley, Julian
Hiley, Joseph


Alison, Michael (Barkston Ash)
Crouch, David
Hill, James (Southampton, Test)


Allason, James (Hemel Hempstead)
Dean, Paul
Holland, Philip


Atkins, Humphrey
Deedes, Rt. Hn. W. F.
Holt, Miss Mary


Awdry, Daniel
Dixon, Piers
Hornby, Richard


Baker, Kenneth (St. Marylebone)
du Cann, Rt. Hn. Edward
Hornsby-Smithy, Rt. Hn. Dame Patricia


Batsford, Brian
Dykes, Hugh
Howe, Hn. Sir Geoffrey (Reigate)


Beamish, Col. Sir Tufton
Edwards, Nicholas (Pembroke)
Howell, David (Guildford)


Bennett, Dr. Reginald (Gosport)
Elliot, Capt. Walter (Carshalton)
Howell, Ralph (Norfolk, N.)


Biffen, John
Elliott, R. W. (N'c'tle-upon-Tyne, N.)
Hunt, John


Biggs-Davison, John
Eyre, Reginald
Hutchison, Michael Clark


Blaker, Peter
Farr, John
Iremonger, T. L.


Boardman, Tom (Leicester, S. W.)
Fell, Anthony
James, David


Boscawen, Robert
Fenner, Mrs. Peggy
Jenkin, Patrick (Woodford)


Bossom, Sir Clive
Fidler, Michael
Jennings, J. c. (Burton)


Bowden, Andrew
Fisher, Nigel (Surbiton)
Jessel, Toby


Boyd-Carpenter, Rt. Hn. John
Fletcher-Cooke, Charles
Kaberry, Sir Donald


Bray, Ronald
Fookes, Miss Janet
King, Tom (Bridgwater)


Brinton, Sir Tatton
Fortescue, Tim
Kinsey, J. R.


Brocklebank-Fowler, Christopher
Fowler, Norman
Knox, David


Bruce-Gardyne, J.
Fox, Marcus
Langford-Holt, Sir John


Buchanan-Smith, Alick (Angus, N &amp; M)
Fraser, Rt. Hn. Hugh (St'ffom &amp; Stone)
Legge-Bourke, Sir Harry


Bullus, Sir Eric
Gardner, Edward
Le Marchant, Spencer


Burden, F. A.
Glyn, Dr. Alan
Loveridge, John


Butler, Adam (Bosworth)
Goodhart, Philip
Luce, R. N.


Campbell, Rt. Hn. G. (Moray &amp; Nairn)
Gower, Raymond
McAdden, Sir Stephen


Carlisle, Mark
Gray, Hamish
MacArthur, Ian


Channon, Paul
Green, Alan
McCrindle, R. A,


Chapman, Sydney
Griffiths, Eldon (Bury St. Edmunds)
McLaren, Martin


Chataway, Rt. Hn. Christopher
Gummer, Selwyn
McMaster, Stanley


Churchill, W. S.
Hall, Miss Joan (Keighley)
Macmillan, Maurice (Famham)


Clarke, Kenneth (Rushcliffe)
Harrison, Brian (Maldon)
McNair-Wilson, Michael


Clegg, Walter
Haselhurst, Alan
Maginnis, John E.


Costain, A. P.
Hastings, Stephen
Mather, Carol


Cooke, Robert
Hawkins, Paul
Maude, Angus


Cooper, A. E.
Hicks, Robert
Maudling, Rt. Hn. Reginald


Cormack, Patrick
Higgins, Terence L.
Mawby, Ray




Maxwell-Hyslop, R. J.
Pym, Rt. Hn. Francis
Taylor, Edward M. (G'gow, Cathcart)


Meyer, Sir Anthony
Quennell, Miss J. M.
Taylor, Frank (Moss Side)


Mills, Peter (Torrington)
Raison, Timothy
Taylor, Robert (Croydon, N. W.)


Moate, Roger
Ramsden, Rt. Hn. James
Tebbit, Norman


Molyneaux, James
Redmond, Robert
Temple, John M.


Money, Ernle
Reed, Laurance (Bolton, E.)
Thomas, John Stradling (Monmouth)


Monks, Mrs. Connie
Roberts, Michael (Cardiff, N.)
Trafford, Dr. Anthony


Montgomery, Fergus
Roberts, Wyn (Conway)
Tugendhat, Christopher


More, Jasper
Rost, Peter
Turton, Rt. Hn. Sir Robin


Morgan, Geraint (Denbigh)
Royle, Anthony
Vaughan, Dr. Gerard


Morgan-Giles, Rear-Adm.
Russell, Sir Ronald
Waddington, David


Mudd, David
Scott, Nicholas
Walder, David (Clitheroe)


Murton, Oscar
Sharples Richard
Walker-Smith, Rt. Hn. Sir Derek


Neave, Airey
Shaw, Michael (Sc'b'gh &amp; Whitby)
Wall, Patrick


Normanton, Tom
Simeons, Charles
Ward, Dame Irene


Onslow, Cranley
Sinclair, Sir George
Wells, John (Maidstone)


Oppenheim, Mrs. Sally
Skeet, T. H. H.
White, Roger (Gravesend)


Osborn, John
Soref, Harold
Wilkinson, John


Owen, Idris (Stockport, N.)
Speed, Keith
Wolrige-Gordon, Patrick


Page, John (Harrow, W.)
Spence, John
Wood, Rt. Hn. Richard


Parkinson, Cecil (Enfield, W.)
Sproat, Iain
Wylie, Rt. Hn. N. R.


Percival, Ian
Stainton, Keith
Younger, Hn. George


Pounder, Rafton
Stewart-Smith, D. G. (Belper)



Powell, Rt. Hn. J. Enoch
Stoddart-Scott, Col. Sir M.
TELLERS FOR THE NOES:


Prior, Rt. Hn. J. M. L.
Stuttaford, Dr. Tom
Mr. Hector Monro and


Proudfoot, Wilfred
Tapsell, Peter
Mr. Victor Goodhew.

Clause 5

PROCEDURE FOR, AND FURTHER PROVISIONS AS TO, DEPORTATION

Amendment made: No. 27, in page 6, line 39, leave out from beginning to 'and' in line 42, and insert:
(3) A deportation order shall not be made against a person as belonging to the family of another person if more than eight weeks have elapsed since the other person left the United Kingdom after the making of the deportation order against him.—[Mr. Sharples.]

8.0 p.m.

Mr. Sharples: I beg to move, Amendment No. 32, in page 7, line 13, leave out subsection (5).
In Standing Committee we discussed the meaning of subsection (5) and I remember having to explain its provisions, which were not completely obvious to the members of the Committee or to myself without the benefit of the brief which I had.
The intention of the subsection was to ensure that when for any reason a deportation order ceased to have effect, there would be no risk of the person previously subject to it challenging the legality of any action taken under it. This followed a provision contained in Section 9(3) of the Commonwealth Immigrants Act, 1962.
There was quite a lot of criticism of the wording by my hon. Friend the Member for Hertfordshire, South-West (Mr. Longden), the hon. Member for Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles (Mr.

David Steel) and the hon. and learned Member for Dulwich (Mr. S. C. Silkin). I undertook to have another look at the wording and that led us to question whether the subsection was necessary, and we came to the conclusion that it was not. The effect of the Amendment is to remove it from the Bill.
As the subsection was universally criticised, I hope that the Amendment will be universally supported.

Mr. Peter Archer: For the Opposition, I can implement the hon. Gentleman's hope. We are duly grateful for the way in which he has met us. If the Government would be as frank and forthcoming on every matter, we should make much quicker progress.

Amendment agreed to.

Clause 6

RECOMMENDATIONS BY COURT FOR DEPORTATION

Mr. S. C. Silkin: I beg to move Amendment No. 33, in page 8, line 12, leave out from 'person' to end of subsection (3) and insert:
'convicted of an offence may be recommended for deportation notwithstanding that no other penalty is imposed upon such conviction'
The Amendment arises from a discussion in Committee between the Secretary of State and myself principally, although other hon. Members took part in the discussion. At the end of the day we found that there was nothing between us in principle and the question


was simply as to the best way of giving effect to the principle which was agreed.
The provisions of the Bill at present are such that a person may be ordered to be deported by a court
notwithstanding any enactment to the contrary and notwithstanding that the court does not proceed to conviction".
In those circumstances, he is to be regarded as a person convicted of the offence.
The difficulty we had with that form of wording was that the effect of it is that people who are absolutely or conditionally discharged—the difficulty arises in particular in the case of absolute discharge—are none the less to be regarded for these purposes as persons convicted of the offence, although the whole object of the provision in the Criminal Justice Act, 1948 which brings into existence the absolute discharge is that a person shall not be regarded as having been convicted.
I suggested in Committee that the form of wording used in many cases in breach of probation cases—that a person be sentenced to one day's imprisonment, which in effect means that he does not go to prison—might be an appropriate way of avoiding what seems to be the dilution of the principle of absolute discharge not amounting to a conviction. The Secretary of State thought that even to have a day's imprisonment on one's record was a matter of moment which he regarded, apparently, as a matter of greater moment than to have on his record an order for deportation; and the right hon. Gentleman wanted to avoid that at all costs.
We ended by the Secretary of State understanding my objection to the dilution of the principle of absolute discharge and by my understanding the Secretary of State's objection to the alternative method.
In those circumstances we have considered whether there is not a third method of dealing with the matter which would solve both difficulties. The third method which we think might be appropriate is embodied in the Amendment, which provides simply that a person who is
convicted of an offence may be recommended for deportation notwithstanding that no other penalty is imposed upon such conviction".

That would avoid the necessity for an absolute discharge in such cases and, therefore, the dilution of the principle of the absolute discharge, and would avoid the necessity for sentencing a person to even a day's imprisonment.
The word "penalty" in relation to a recommendation for deportation is an appropriate term, because it is a part of the sentence for the purposes of appeal. One can appeal against a recommendation for deportation. Even though the Secretary of State and I were in agreement that there might well be cases where the recommendation is made not so much for the penalty purpose as because the court considers it to be in the interest of the defendant himself that he should be returned to conditions of stability in the country of his origin, none the less the term "penalty" is perfectly appropriate and, indeed, is in accordance with the provision of the clause as it stands.
This is not a matter of the widest possible significance, although I am delighted to see that, if I anticipate aright, the Solicitor-General has taken the matter under his ample wing, and no doubt he will tell us whether this form of wording is a possible one and, if so, whether it is a form of wording which would commend itself to the Government as solving what I admit is a quite narrow problem but none the less a real one.

8.15 p.m.

The Solicitor-General (Sir Geoffrey Howe): The hon. and learned Member for Dulwich (Mr. S. C. Silkin) was kind enough to suggest that this matter was under my "ample wing". That is to exaggerate my rôle in connection with the Amendment.
The point the hon. and learned Gentleman made in Committee has received the consideration of my right hon. and hon. Friends at the Home Office as well as of my right lion, and learned Friend the Lord Advocate and myself. The hon. and learned Gentleman is right in saying that there is common ground here in the sense of wanting to ensure that in the appropriate case, be it a penalty or not, the deportation order can be made without the necessity for a sentence of one day's imprisonment.
The approach adopted by the hon. and learned Gentleman's form of words does


not seem to be either necessary or right to achieve that; because in England and Wales, and in Scotland save in courts of summary jurisdiction, where a court makes an order for an absolute or a conditional discharge it does so, and can do so only, where the person concerned has been convicted of an offence. It is only the conviction which lays the foundation for making such an order. Thereafter, for other purposes the conviction no longer counts as a conviction; but only when the court has recorded a conviction can it make an order for an absolute or a conditional discharge.
However, in courts of summary jurisdiction in Scotland, for reasons which derive from the different formulation of the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act, 1949, a court of summary jurisdiction does not proceed to conviction. If a Scottish court of summary jurisdiction makes an order for absolute discharge—I understand that there is no conditional discharge in Scotland—it does so without proceeding to a conviction.
So, if the formulation adopted by the hon. and learned Gentleman's words were to be adopted, a court of summary jurisdiction in Scotland would not be able to make a recommendation for a deportation order. That is one of the substantial reasons why the original wording of the Bill is that
notwithstanding that the Court does not proceed to conviction
the person shall
be regarded as a person convicted of the offence".
A person in respect of whom a Scottish court makes an order for an absolute discharge would not be and could not be regarded as a person qualifying for a recommendation for deportation without the words
be regarded as a person convicted of the offence".
The effect of this form of words is expressed as "for purposes of deportation" at line 12 on page 8. Therefore, it does not alter the basic quality of the conviction recorded in England and Wales or the finding of guilt that is recorded without a conviction in a court of summary jurisdiction in Scotland. It merely describes the condition which must be fulfilled in order to lay the foundation for a deportation recommendation to be

made. If the words in the Amendment were to be adopted, there is that anomaly in respect of courts of summary jurisdiction in Scotland.
If I wanted to be tendentious, I could argue that the hon. and learned Gentleman in adopting the words "no other penalty" is implying perhaps further than can be implied that a recommendation for deportation is a penalty. He acknowledged that there was some force in that argument, which perhaps it is unnecessary to make here.
The point is that this form of words is necessary to lay the foundations for the making of an order or recommendation for deportation. I do not see that it can alter the quality of the associated "penalty" of absolute or conditional discharge if such should be imposed in conjunction with a deportation order. Certainly, what both sides of the House are anxious to avoid is avoided by this formulation. It is not necessary to impose the one day's formal order of imprisonment.
I hope that the hon. and learned Gentleman will be persuaded to accept that at the least his own form of words would make for some difficulty and that the present form of words is one with which he can continue to live with tolerable equanimity in the years ahead.

Mr. Robert Hughes: The position as the Solicitor-General has outlined it is obviously correct in law. I would hesitate to cross swords with the hon. and learned Gentleman on points of law.
I am concerned that, with the desire of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Dulwich (Mr. S. C. Silkin) to get the phraseology of the Clause right, the concept of expressing deportation as a penalty in itself has been introduced. We had a considerable discussion in Committee as to how far deportation was a penalty. As we all understand the Bill as it stands, deportation from this country means, in all but very rare cases, that the opportunity for the person deported to return is completely taken away. Therefore, there was also a considerable discussion in Committee about the deportation of first offenders. We thought that no one should be deprived of the life and facilities available in this country simply on a first offence, especially as in a later part of the Bill


there is reference to sentences of six months or more.
People outside the House, and even inside it, who read the legislation will not follow its precise meaning. On a perhaps cursory reading of the Clause as drafted, certainly by someone who is not au fait with the intricacies of the law, one could be led to believe that someone could be deported from this country even if not guilty of an offence. Whilst the wording suggested by my hon. and learned Friend perhaps carries with it a meaning that he did not intend, there is need to tidy up this mumbo-jumbo, perhaps in another place.
If there must be special provision in the Bill to take care of the courts of summary jurisdiction in Scotland, the way to do it would be to spell it out more clearly in a separate subsection. Otherwise, people outside the House who are extremely hostile and suspicious—in many cases with very good cause—will find in the Bill things which are not there. We should remove unfounded suspicions as far as we can. It is one thing to have suspicions about a Bill that we all dislike, to have suspicions about the real meaning and intention of a Government in introducing a Measure, but that is totally different from allowing legislation to pass which would give a completely misleading impression of its intention.
In a later Amendment we shall see the difficulties involved in trying to accommodate both the law of Scotland and law of England and Wales in one subsection. Will the Solicitor-General be prepared to consider fresh wording to make the matter completely clear both in law and for people outside the House who must understand it?

The Solicitor-General: Perhaps I may intervene here. The hon. Gentleman may be talking beside this particular point. I have read what he said in Standing Committee about the general undesirability of its being thought around the world that a deportation order of whatever kind, imposed for whatever reason, is equivalent to a conviction. As I read the OFFICIAL REPORT of the proceedings in Committee, hon. Members on both sides accepted that it would not be desirable that any deportation order should be regarded as flowing from, and therefore amounting to, a conviction.
The provision in subsection (3) is related only to Clause 3(6). Subsection 3 says:
For purposes of section 3(6) above—".
It therefore arises only in the context of a situation where a court has in fact found someone guilty of an offence and has therefore made a recommendation for his deportation. All that this subsection does is to say how the court is to proceed and how the Act is to work in a situation where a person is found to have committed an offence. In that situation it is inescapable, if anyone can analyse it and work back to the source, that the person was deported as a result of a recommendation by a court which can have been made only after he had been found guilty.
There is nothing I can suggest in the context of this subsection or of Clause 3(6) to avoid the conclusion that a deportation order made after a recommendation following a finding of guilt does indeed spring from a finding of guilt.
The wider argument that the hon. Gentleman advances arises outside the context of this subsection, important though it may be.

Mr. Robert Hughes: I do not think that what I have said is outside the Clause, though I accept the hon. and learned Gentleman's view that in a sense it is slightly to the side of the Clause.
Race relations is a very sensitive matter. Despite the qualifications made by the hon. and learned Gentleman, he should look at the wording, because it can be totally misconstrued. Perhaps it is not Parliament's job to worry about how legislation is construed. Some hon. Members may hold that view, but I believe that legislation must not only be legally correct, open to legal interpretation and subject to the kind of detailed analysis which someone following it through Clause by Clause can give it, but should also be clear to the layman, certainly in the case of this Bill. It seems to me that laymen could misconstrue the purpose of the Clause.
I accept that perhaps this is not a major point, but I hope that on reflection the Solicitor-General will follow the example of the Home Secretary, who has once or twice today accepted our arguments, despite the fact that in Standing


Committee he was adamant that certain things were not to happen, that there were certain rights of appeal which were not justiciable, that he could not possibly give way. In the relatively short space of time since Committee he has realised that there was force in our arguments. All I am asking of the Solicitor-General is that he should bear in mind what I have said and agree that in another place, after consultation with the Lord Advocate, it may be clearer to spell the matter out in a different way.

8.30 p.m.

Mr. Weitzman: Someone who commits an offence and is given an absolute or conditional discharge has still committed the offence. If the Solicitor-General omitted the words
… it shall, notwithstanding any enactment to the contrary and notwithstanding that the court does not proceed to conviction, …
he would still serve his purpose. The subsection would then read:
… a person who on being charged with an offence is found to have committed it shall be regarded as a person convicted of the offence, and references to conviction shall be construed accordingly.

Mr. S. C. Silkin: The point is that, whereas the absolute discharge is a sign that the court regards the offence as so trivial as not to warrant a penalty, the recommendation for deportation may be regarded as a sign that the offence is so grave that the person should be deported. That is the contradiction which we tried to correct in Committee and by our Amendment tonight.
The Solicitor-General—and I am glad to say that I was able to understand his Scottish accent—has persuaded me that, for reasons peculiar to Scotland, my proposed method of dealing with the matter is not very satisfactory; and those sitting behind me who are more expert in the subject than I have confirmed this view. Nonetheless, the problem remains, even though it may be a minor problem compared with many other problems with which we have dealt.
In the light of what has been said by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Edinburgh, Leith (Mr. Ronald King Murray) and myself, I hope that the hon. and learned Gentleman will have another look at the wording of the Clause and see whether there is an alternative method

appropriate to England and Wales as well as to Scotland which will solve the difficulty. I do not ask him to produce a solution on the spot. In the confident belief that he will not go away and forget about it. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Mr. Ronald King Murray,: I beg to move Amendment No. 131, in page 8, line 40, leave out from 'appeal' to end of line 41.
The Amendment arises out of a difference between Scots law and the law of England and Wales on appeals procedure. Although the Scottish point is rather technical, it raises a point of principle of general application which may be of wider interest to the House.
The point was touched on by my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen, North (Mr. Robert Hughes) in Committee at cols. 908–9 of the OFFICIAL REPORT of 18th May. The Home Secretary in reply said:
In general, the purpose of the Clause as drafted—which, I believe, follows precedence in all these respects—is to ensure that the procedures in Scotland are as similar as possible to the procedures in England, taking into account the different law which applies in the two countries. I will certainly look again at the drafting with the help of the Lord Advocate; but the principle of keeping the two countries in line and following precedent is one which I am sure will be accepted by the Committee."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Standing Committee B, 18th May, 1971; c. 934.]
I notice that the Lord Advocate is present. No doubt he has given the Home Secretary the benefit of his advice. Just as the Home Secretary suggested that both sides of the Committee would accept the view that the two countries should be in line as much as possible, I think that both sides of the House would accept it.
The point of Clause 6 is to give a right of appeal, and a statutory opportunity to appeal, to persons convicted of an offence who are recommended by the court for deportation. I use the term "convicted of an offence" with the gloss which was used in the debate on the last Amendment. The right of appeal is given for Scotland in subsection (5)(b) and for the rest of the United Kingdom in subsection (5)(a). In each case the right is


assimilated to an existing form of criminal appeal, and for Scotland the phrase
without prejudice to any other form of appeal under any rule of law
saves the very useful Scottish form of common law appeal by what is called "bill of suspension" against gross irregularity or harsh and oppressive treatment by the court. The Government are to be commended for doing that.
May I say in parenthesis that the point which exercised the mind of my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen, North superficially arises here to some extent, because he will have noted that in Scotland the appeal is assimiliated to an appeal against conviction, whereas in England and Wales it is assimilated to an appeal against sentence. I assure my hon. Friend that there is nothing sinister in that. It gives a Scottish appellant greater rights than he otherwise would have. He can appeal as of right on a question of law and, on other questions, he has the right to apply for leave to appeal. The Scottish appellant has perhaps a better opportunity for appeal than his counterpart in England and Wales.
This form of appeal given by the Bill, unlike the statutory appeal which the Clause has primarily in mind, involves no time limit—and here I am referring to the Scottish common law procedure by way of bill of suspension. That is one of its merits: it is not hidebound by a time limit. If a person complains of gross irregularity or harsh and oppressive treatment by the court, it is obvious that it may not emerge within the time limit for appeal. When it does, it vitiates what has gone before finally and decisively.
In contrast with a common law appeal, the Scottish appeal against conviction to which the deportation appeal is assimilated in Scotland must be made within 10 days of the court's determination of the case. If the House gave effect to Amendment No. 131, there would be no doubt that the time in Scotland for treating an appeal as pending would expire at the end of 10 days, as provided for ordinary criminal appeals, and there would be no possibility of encroachment on the common law remedy of suspension.
But the Bill as drafted expressly provides for a period of 14 instead of 10

days during which a deportation appeal will be deemed to be pending. This extension is made in general terms, so that if the Bill is enacted a court may conceivably construe it as applying to the procedure by bill of suspension also, and the court may reach the view that an appeal by suspension could not be brought in respect of a deportation recommendation, even though a gross irregularity lay behind it or harsh and oppressive treatement was involved, after the expiry of 14 days, despite the saving words in the previous subsection.
I press the Government to say whether this is what they intend and, if it is, how they can reconcile it with the splendid words in the previous subsection about there being no prejudice to the existing common law appeal.
I pass from the technical point to the point of wider interest. Why should the time during which an appeal against a deportation order is deemed to be pending be 14 days in Scotland but be left to the ordinary rules governing appeals elsewhere? Presumably it was in an attempt to achieve a degree of uniformity that this drafting was adopted. I doubt whether it does this because if I am right, and I venture with great diffidence into the law that prevails south of the Border, the time for deportation appeals in England and Wales will vary from 14 days to 28 days, depending on the status of the court of first instance wsich is appealed against.
If that is right we are not getting unanimity under the Clause, so that the principle which was put forward by the Home Secretary in Committee—which would have been acceptable to both sides—will not be effective because there will be different times, during which a deportation appeal is deemed to be pending in the two countries, and indeed quite different courts. If it is unanimity which is sought so that there is substantially the same right of appeal throughout the United Kingdom, would it not be fairer and more logical to make it the same for all and to fix the term of the longest period in any court, namely 28 days. This could be achieved by redrafting subsection (6) so as to provide for a fixed, uniform period for deportation appeals and for the time during which appeals would


be deemed to be pending—a period uniform for the whole of the United Kingdom. Quite frankly, for the life of me I cannot see why, if in certain circumstances an appellant is entitled to 28 days in England and Wales, it should not apply to all appeals in all parts of the United Kingdom. I would press the Government to look at this suggestion most seriously to see whether they would be prepared to come forward with an Amendment at some later stage.

The Lord Advocate (Mr. Norman Wylie): I take the Amendment of the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh, Leith (Mr. Ronald King Murray) as a probing Amendment.
What I can do unequivocally is to assure the hon. and learned Gentleman that nothing in this subsection affects the common law right of appeal by way of Bill of Suspension. What these provisions are designe dto do is to govern the circumstances in which the Home Secretary can exercise the powers which the legislation give to him. It does not in any way prejudice—and indeed the qualification in subsection (5)(b) is in these terms—the right of an individual to appeal in Scotland by Bill of Suspension.
The other point raised by the hon. and learned Gentleman, on the 14 days, has a degree of validity. As he is aware, the appeal provisions in Scotland are governed by the Criminal Appeal (Scotland) Act 1926 which provides under Section 4, a period of 10 days within which an appeal can be lodged. In summary cases under the Summary Jurisdiction (Scotland) Act 1954, as amended, Section 63 equally gives a period of 10 days.
As I understand it, the position in England and Wales—and I take the words from what the hon. and learned Member for Dulwich (Mr. S. C. Silkin) said, as reported in column 916 in Committee—is 14 days on appeal from the magistrates' court and 28 days, under fairly recent legislation, from the superior courts.
Accordingly, so far as England and Wales are concerned, it was perfectly adequate to relate the provisions here to the ordinary appeal provisions. In Scotland, because of the existence of the common law right of appeal by Bill of Suspension, there had to be some time

limit written into the legislation. This is something which arose in the 1962 Act and the provisions of this subsection are closely related to the provisions of Section 9 of the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962.
I cannot put it better than the way it was put by the hon. and learned Gentleman in column 916, when he said,
Obviously, I do not suggest that the period should be unlimited,
—of course the period with regard to a Bill of Suspension is not limited—
because then a deportation order could never be made. But I do not understand why the 28-day period should not be allowed for Scotland, which would be much more in conformity with the position of the higher courts in England and near the position in relation to an appeal under the common law procedure in Scotland."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Standing Committee B, 18th May, 1971; c. 916.]
It is a question of judgment. The 14 days was selected. It more than covered the appeal provisions in Scotland which would have restricted the period to 10 days. Since 1962 these changes have been made in England and Wales. I have a certain sympathy with the argument and I think I can say that we shall consider the question of writing 28 days into this legislation. I can see certain administrative advantages from the Home Secretary's point of view. We will consider this and with that assurance perhaps the hon. and learned Gentleman will be disposed to withdraw his Amendment.

8.45 p.m.

Mr. S. C. Silkin: Before the Lord Advocate sits down may I use him, as it were, as a vehicle to put a question to the Home Secretary and Minister of State? I wonder whether consideration could be given to what I thought was the valid point made by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Edinburgh, Leith (Mr. Ronald King Murray), that there is a case for having a common period throughout the length and breadth of the land irrespective of the court. I think it may be a particularly valid point where one is dealing with a recommendation for deportation as distinct from ordinary penalties of fine or imprisonment, because of the nature of the problems to which it gives rise, problems rather more complex than problems with which one deals in other


cases. I wonder whether he would consider, therefore, saying that he will consult his right hon. and hon. Friends on the possibility of a common period.

The Lord Advocate: I would say that my right hon. Friend has listened with care to what the hon. and learned Gentleman has said and I have no doubt that he will take it very much into account.

Mr. Ronald King Murray: In the light of what the right hon. and learned Gentleman said, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 7

EXEMPTION FROM DEPORTATION FOR CERTAIN EXISTING RESIDENTS

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Robert Grant-Ferris): The next Amendment is No. 34 and with it there is a list of other Amendments which I think it better not to try to describe. It appears as some sort of potpourri to me.

No. 94, in page 9, line 7, after '(c)', insert:
'if at the time of the decision of the Secretary of State he had at all times since the end of July 1971 been ordinarily resident in the United Kingdom and Islands; and
(b) shall not be liable to deportation under section 3(5)(a)';

No. 99, in line 8, leave out 'five' and insert 'ten';

No. 35, in line 8, leave out 'been settled' and insert:
'or, if more than five years have elapsed since the end of July 1971, at all times since the end of that month been ordinarily resident';

As an Amendment to Amendment No. 35, in line 1, leave out 'five' and insert ' ten ';

No. 100, in line 12, leave out 'five' and insert ' ten ';

No. 36, in line 12, leave out 'been settled' and insert:
'or, if more than five years have elapsed since the end of July 1971, at all times since the end of that month been ordinarily resident';

As an Amendment to Amendment No. 36, in line 1, leave out 'five' and insert 'ten';

No. 37, in line 13, at end insert:
( ) A person who has at any time become ordinarily resident in the United Kingdom or in any of the Islands shall not be treated for

the purposes of this section as having ceased to be so by reason only of his having remained there in breach of the immigration laws.

No. 37, in line 13, at end insert:
( ) A person who has at any time become ordinarily resident in the United Kingdom or in any of the Islands shall not be treated for the purposes of this section as having ceased to be so by reason only of his having remained there in breach of the immigration laws.

No. 38, in line 14, leave out from beginning to 'was' in line 16 and insert:
(2) The 'last five years' before the material time under subsection (1)(b) or (c) above is to be taken as a period amounting in total to five years exclusive of any time during which the person claiming exemption under this section".

As Amendments to Amendment No. 38, in line 1, leave out 'five' and insert 'ten'; in line 2, leave out 'five' and insert 'ten'.

No. 39, in line 19, leave out 'if'.

Mr. Maudling: I beg to move Amendment No. 34, in page 9, line 6, at end insert:
'if at the time of the Secretary of State's decision he had at all times since the end of July 1971 been ordinarily resident in the United Kingdom and Islands; and
(b) shall not be liable to deportation under section 3(5)(a)'.
My Amendments, that is, Nos. 34, 35, 36, 37, 38 and 39, have a limited purpose. Clause 7 to which these Amendments relate deals with the particular question of people already resident here when the Bill comes into force. I said at an earlier stage that I did not intend in any way to prejudice the position of people already here. It has been pointed out to me that there are one or two points where there is a difference between that and the Bill as it stands at the moment and, therefore, I want to change it by these Amendments.
The first point is, people who under the existing law are Commonwealth citizens and not liable to deportation on ordinary non-conducive grounds. I am ensuring that those already here will not become liable, as they would as the Bill originally was drafted, to deportation on non-conducive grounds.
Secondly, there is a rather complicated point about whether people, in order to achieve five years' residence within the meaning of the Bill, have been settled here without any restriction, or whether they are ordinary residents. The effect of


these Amendments is to make these changes.
First of all, Commonwealth and Irish citizens ordinarily resident here at the end of July, 1971, are not to be liable to deportation on non-conducive grounds provided they are ordinarily resident and their residence has been continuous up to the time deportation becomes an issue. This is carrying out an undertaking I gave.
Commonwealth citizens ordinarily resident here at the end of July, 1971, are not to be liable to deportation on conviction and recommendation by a court if at the relevant time they have been ordinarily resident here for five years and residence has been continuous since the end of July, 1971.
In other words, those ordinarily resident here will get the benefit first of all of not being liable to deportation on non-conducive grounds, and secondly, of the immunity from ordinary criminal grounds, after five years' residence here.
The other point which arose in Committee and which I am making quite clear is what happens when a person unfortunately is in prison during this period. The time during which he is in prison will not count towards the five years. It will not be a break in the five years. Therefore, if he spends six or nine months in jail, he will have to add another six or nine months to the end of his five years. This is what the Committee wanted, and I put forward these Amendments as carrying out my undertaking to ensure that the people already here will not be deleteriously affected by the Bill.

Mr. Peter Archer: Mr. Deputy Speaker, you described this group of Amendments as a pot-pourri. It is certainly a complicated series which may affect the lives of many unsuspecting families and, possibly, pose problems for many unsuspecting judges.
As the right hon. Gentleman has explained, the background to all the Amendments lies in his undertaking both in Committee and on Second Reading that immigrants who were already living in the United Kingdom, although they may not be patrial under the Bill, will not be in a worse position in consequence than they are at present. That is a wholly

commendable purpose, and in so far as that purpose is fulfilled by this group of Amendments, we welcome them.
Amendment No. 34, as the right hon. Gentleman says, seeks to implement that undertaking in relation to deportation on non-conducive grounds. As originally drafted, non-patrials would be liable to deportation on this ground in the first five years under the Bill, whereas under the present law they are not. The Amendment seeks to restore their existing position, provided they continue to reside here. I am sure the right hon. Gentleman did not intend to claim that latter provision as a concession. It is, of course, a restriction on the concession which he is making, but it is a restriction of which we do not complain.
Amendment No. 34 also provides, separately, that non-patrials will not be liable to deportation even if they are in breach of condition or have overstayed their leave, provided they have been here for five years. We are not entirely happy about that last provision. I am not sure why the right hon. Gentleman felt it necessary to introduce the five-year restriction period and why he did not apply the concession to all immigrants who are already here.
Subject to that, and to what I propose to say later in relation to our Amendment No. 94, we have no quarrel with Amendment No. 34. We shall merely invite the House, and possibly the right hon. Gentleman, to consider, having heard the argument, whether our Amendment may not be preferable to the way in which the right hon. Gentleman has sought to do this. It may be for the convenience of the House if, before I come to our Amendment, I indicate the view of the Opposition on each of the other Amendments which the right hon. Gentleman has introduced.
Amendment No. 35 provides that those who are now living here will receive the benefit of the Government's promise only if they continue to live here. We have no complaint about that in general but we are a little worried about the way in which it will operate in practice. A person who is now living here and who goes and lives elsewhere for three years can hardly complain if he is not permitted to return on the conditions he would have enjoyed had he lived here all through that period. But supposing he


has qualified under Clause 7, has resided here for five years and wishes to go abroad for a holiday, to visit his family or in the event of a family crisis. I am told that there is anxiety among the immigrant community about how this provision will operate in practice in that situation. When this man returns from abroad he will be confronted by an immigration officer. He is not a patrial, so presumably he will not go through the queue which, after the Bill becomes law, will be marked "Patrial". The immigration officer will, presumably, be a somewhat suspicious individual. That is the function of immigration officers, and we do not complain about that. But how is he now to convince the immigration officer that he is not subject to control under the Bill, that he is not liable to deportation if in breach of condition and, therefore, that he need not be interrogated to show whether he is in breach of condition? Is there a document which he can show to the immigration officer? If so, what kind of document, and how does he go about getting it?
If I may digress a moment while, I hope, still remaining in order, this question has been put to me in relation to Clause 34 (4), which, as I understand its purpose, carries a little further the protection which the right hon. Gentleman is seeking to afford in these Amendments. It is not enough in that situation to say, "It is easy. All he does when he returns is to explain to the immigration officer the circumstances of his case". Immigration officers are not as gullible as that, and we should have reason to complain if they did no more than accept explanations, even if they were given as articulately as, perhaps, the right hon. Gentleman might give them.
The situation is all the more difficult when the people with whom immigration officers will be dealing are not articulate and not clearly aware of the provisions under which they are required to satisfy the immigration officer on certain matters. Sometimes people can make elaborate provision in advance, but sometimes they have to leave the country so quickly, perhaps because of a death in the family, that they cannot make such provision. In many situations of that kind, there is not much that they can do. When they return, therefore, they must run the risk of being in the sort of situation which I have described.
When there is all the time in the world, however, and all they want to do is to know how to set about smoothing their path when they return, what can they do? I am sure that the immigrant community would welcome such guidance as the right hon. Gentleman can give.

Mr. Raymond Gower: It occurs to me that such a person returning would have documents. For instance, if he had been here continuously over a period he would have National Insurance papers, tax returns and all sorts of things. The immigration officer would not have to rely on his word. There would be ample evidence that he had been here for a long time and been away for just a few weeks.

Mr. Archer: If the answer is—no doubt the right hon. Gentleman will tell us—that when such a person goes abroad in those circumstances he should take with him his driving licence, his National Insurance card and all his other personal papers, that at least will be known to the immigrant community and they can act accordingly. But I venture the hope that, when someone goes abroad on a trip of this kind, he does not have to take with him all those documents which most of us know we should lose if we took them with us and which we always leave at home. I hope, therefore, that there is a more simple answer.
I was confronted with an example of this sort of situation only a fortnight ago. A student was coming to visit his brother who is a doctor practising in my constituency. My constituent was anxious that, when his brother arrived, there would be no difficulty at the airport, it being a perfectly bona fide visit. He wrote, therefore, to the Home Office, asking what he should do, and he wrote to the British consul at the place where his brother was staying to make the same inquiry. In each case, he received the same answer, that there was really nothing he could do about it. The student was entitled to come here to visit his brother, and he must merely explain the purpose of his visit to the immigration officer when he arrived.
The doctor wrote to me saying that he was not happy about it and asking whether I could do anything to make sure that his brother would be able to enter without difficulty. I telephoned to the


Minister of State's private office. I received a most willing response, but I was told that there was really no procedure prescribed for such a case. When he arrives, I was told, he will simply have to explain the circumstances, the consul who had already been consulted would, no doubt, make known to the immigration officer the purpose of the visit, and there would be no difficulty. I had to be content with that, and I informed the doctor accordingly.
In fact, when the brother arrived, he was detained all night. He was subjected to a long cross-examination. The doctor himself, who attempted to intervene, was subjected to a long cross-examination. The result was frustration and anger and a general mix-up of a kind which one hopes need not normally occur.
Admittedly, the student in that case was not in the sort of category with which the right hon. Gentleman is dealing in these Amendments, but his case raises the same sort of problem. We want to ensure that people should not get into a situation where they are subjected to that kind of treatment. It would not be difficult to provide them with some kind of document which they could show to the immigration officer

Mr. Anthony Fell: The hon. and learned Gentleman said a moment ago that most of us lose documents anyway, so what is the point of presenting the person with another one?

9.0 p.m.

Mr. Peter Archer: I was saying that it would be a pity if every immigrant when abroad were required to carry with him his National Insurance card, driving licence and all the kinds of personal papers which, if we lose, we feel we have gone out of existence. I was proposing that there should be one simple document which somebody going abroad could carry with him. Of course he might lose it and that could apply to any document. The possibility is that there could be a stamp in a person's passport. If the hon. Member for Yarmouth (Mr. Fell) wants to pursue his objection, the person might also lose his passport. We should provide one simple procedure that would not impose too great a burden.

Sir George Sinclair: Is not a re-entry document the sort of thing that is required? A great deal has been done to eliminate trouble at the port of entry, which has been beneficial both to the immigrant and to the immigration officers. It would be of particular help if we were to provide a simple re-entry certificate with a time period contained in it.

Mr. Archer: Not for the first time the hon. Member for Dorking (Sir G. Sinclair) and I are proceeding along the same lines. I would be happy if the Home Secretary could consider some such suggestion.

Mr. Maudling: If the immigrant wants to go abroad all he does is take his passport with him and have it with him when he returns. There would be no change in that situation.

Mr. Archer: The Home Secretary says that they should take their passports. It does not follow that anybody entitled to a United Kingdom passport who was nevertheless a non-patrial would find that all the questions put to him by the immigration officer would be answered by the production of a passport. Our complaint is that the Bill does not equate citizenship with patriality. What is required is a certificate to say that a non-patrial is entitled to enter and leave the United Kingdom. This is all we are saying. If this suggestion puzzles the Home Secretary, I have no doubt that some of his hon. Friends behind him who have grasped the point will explain it to him.
Amendment No. 35, subject to what I have just said, does not occasion us any difficulty, and I will say no more about it, nor do we have any quarrel with Amendment No. 36, which affects the new proposal in relation to deportation on the recommendation of a court.
Clause 37 seems to be the right hon. Gentleman's response to an invitation made to him by the hon. Member for Ashford (Mr. Deeds) to offer some kind of amnesty to those already in this country. If that is so, then again it is welcome so far as it goes. Amendment No. 38 is in fulfilment of the right hon. Gentleman's undertakings to ensure that, for the purposes of deportation on the recommendation of a court, the period of five years would not be interrupted


by a sentence of imprisonment so that the period would have to begin again. Again we would welcome that. Finally, Amendment No. 39 is consequential.
I hope that I have indicated the Opposition's attitude to the object of the Home Secretary's Amendments.
I turn to our Amendment No. 94 which, in effect, is a sub-Amendment to Government Amendment No. 34. The difference between our respective proposals is that the Home Secretary wants non-patrials already residing here to be liable to deportation under the family provision unless they have resided here for five years. That would be the effect of the non-event, of what he has not done.
We say that they should not be liable to be deported under that provision even if they have not resided here for five years. If they are liable to be deported under that provision, they are in a worse position than had the Bill not taken effect. I understand that that is contrary to the right hon. Gentleman's declared intention. If his intention is that those who were residing here should be no worse off, it is not fulfilled while they are liable to deportation under this provision for their first five years of residence.
It has not been made clear to me what dire threat hangs over us which requires this self-afforded dispensation from the Government's declared intention. I ventured to point this out in Committee at col. 965, and the right hon. Gentleman undertook to look into it. So far we have not been told the consequences of what he saw when he looked in. I hoped that he might have mentioned it when introducing the Amendments. We shall certainly listen to anything that he says on the matter, but, as at present advised, we take the view that our Amendment should commend itself not only to my hon. Friends, but to the Government, because its purpose is to give effect to their declared intention.

Mr. Powell: I wish to refer to the group of Amendments which is my contribution to the amalgam on the Order Paper, which you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, rather kindly referred to as the pot-pourri. It seeks to increase from five to ten years the time after which those already settled and resident here are not liable to deportation. I could have wished that I had had the

opportunity in Committee of putting my point on this and on two succeeding groups of Amendments to my right hon. Friend. I am sorry that I was prevented from doing so by circumstances not in my control.
The Bill alters the position for the future. For all future immigrants, whether aliens or Commonwealth citizens, liability to deportation will be permanent unless and until they become patrial. Unless or until they become patrial, whether an alien or a Commonwealth immigrant has been here, five, ten, 15 or 20 years, he will still be liable to deportation—I should add that I am solely concerned with this type of deportation—following a conviction by a court and upon the recommendation of the court. It is to that class of deportation that I am solely referring. It is therefore thought right as a principle by hon. Members on both sides that there should be no limitation of time upon liability to deportation.
We are passing a completely new dispensation of the immigration law and, without dissent from any quarter, we declare that there ought not to be a limitation of time upon the liability of non-patrials to deportation. It must be taken, therefore, that the House regards as just and proper that, however long a non-patrial settler has been here, if circumstances warrant it he should be liable to be returned to the country of his origin for the good of this country and, in many cases, in his own interests.
I contend that we should take this opportunity to alter the provisions which are carried forward by the Bill relating to persons already settled here at the time when it becomes law. I face, immediately, the objection that to do that would, in some sense, be retrospective, or that it would be in breach of the general principle which my right hon. Friend has maintained throughout—and in the interests of which he has moved the Amendment technically under discussion by the House—namely, not to prejudice the position of persons already here. But I would observe that all legislation on citizenship and immigration, by its very nature, alters existing rights, whether or not they are actually being exercised.
When the five-year deportation rule, if I may so briefly describe it, was written


into the 1962 Act, that itself created a liability which did not previously exist. There was no liability to deportation for Commonwealth citizens up to that time. That Act created it at a stroke, and yet it was not thought wrong on that account to do so. Indeed, the 1962 Act, the 1968 Act, and any legislation which alters the law on citizenship, or the law on immigration, necessarily alters the rights of persons which they are enjoying up to the time of the legislation. So I do not think that that objection in principle can be urged against the House looking again at the five-year rule in relation to existing immigrants in this country.
But, more narrowly, can it be said that to look at, and to alter, that rule would prejudice the position of those already here? The argument against prejudicing anyone's position is that one alters what he was taking into account in deciding how to behave, that one changes the conditions on which he was taking his decisions.
Let us apply that proposition to the matter under consideration. If it is true that the potentially delinquent immigrant jealously counts the time—five years—from his first residence in this country, and then, on five years plus one day, says, "Now come on, let us go and beat it up, because at least I cannot be deported" then, indeed, on that assumption we would be changing his position if we were to reconsider the five-year rule. But I cannot seriously think that the House either envisages that that is a factor which is, or ought to be, taken into consideration by those resident in this country, or that that is a condition of their personal decisions which this House ought to be jealous to preserve.
I conclude, therefore, that we are not estopped by any consideration of fairness or reasonableness or, indeed, by the principle laid down by my right hon. Friend, from reconsidering, on this occasion, the five-year rule, and reconsidering it in the light of the fact that for the future there is to be no limitation on time whatsoever, by common and general consent.
Of course, as the years go on the new rule will apply to an increasing proportion of the immigrant population here—alien or Commonwealth—but for the present, and for many years to come, the

old rule, the rule being carried forward by the Clause, will be that which will apply to the vast majority of cases which may come within the purview of a decision of the court to recommend, and of the Home Secretary to confirm, deportation.
I believe that many hon. Members whose constituencies know these problems will agree with me that they have been confronted with instances where, flagrantly, but for the five-year rule, such-and-such a person ought, in the interests of all concerned, to have been deported. Certainly, as the years have gone by, I have seen more and more instances in which the five-year rule seemed to me to be an irrational and objectionable limitation. I have publicly said, in the light of this experience, that it was a rule which I believe should be altered and a period which should be extended. In the Amendments which I have put on the Order Paper, I have simply suggested the doubling of the period. That would certainly greatly reduce the degree of the present mischief, but I will not quibble about the period.
Of course, an argument could be made for any particular length of years. But circumstances today are very different from those when the figure five was first chosen in 1961. When that Bill was framed, much the greater part of the then immigrant population fell within the period of the previous five years, and in some years following that, the five-year rule brought within its ambit the large majority of the then immigrant population. It is a term of years which has become increasingly anachronistic as the years have gone by. If anyone were to argue that today a period of 10 years is too short a limitation, if limitation there has to be, I would not be disposed to disagree with him.
But I believe that the time has now come when the five-year rule should either be abolished, as we are abolishing it for the future, or revised by an increase in the period.

Mr. Gower: In view of his comments on this five-year rule, does my right hon. Friend find a similar objection to the longstanding rule that an alien who comes here for five years is able to apply, in normal circumstances, to be a naturalised citizen—which is applied not only here


but in many other countries? Is there not a relationship between that kind of rule and the rule of five years which came into the earlier legislation?

9.15 p.m.

Mr. Powell: There may be, but then that, too, is modified in the new circum stances. As my hon. Friend knows, under this Bill there is a discretion now on the Home Secretary after five years to con sider whether he will or will not accord patriality. Of course my hon. Friend appreciates that, as soon as an immigrant becomes patrial, the liability to deporta tion does not apply to him. Therefore, if one were considering the deportation of someone who had been in this country 9½ years, he would be a person who, during the last 4½ of those 9½ years, had not exercised his right hitherto to be patrial. We are, in other words, considering a person who, by his own decision, had not made this country—

Mr. Robert Hughes: rose—

Mr. Powell: May I just—

Mr. Hughes: It is an important point.

Mr. Powell: Yes, but it cannot be so important as to justify the interruption of a single sentence. I will willingly give way to the hon. Member when I have completed my observation, that, if there were a 10-year rule today, it would include five years during which those to whom it applied had deliberately chosen not to become what is now patrial, or citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies by registration, but to remain either aliens or Commonwealth citizens whose home was elsewhere.

Mr. Robert Hughes: The right hon. Gentleman says that such a person deliberately for 4½ years had not exercised his right to apply for patriality or citizenship. He might well have applied but, because of the discretion of the Home Secretary, have been refused such a right.

Mr. Powell: The hon. Gentleman is mistaken. That discretion is for the first time introduced by this Measure in the case to which I am referring; namely, of those immigrants who are already here. They have had the automatic right, after five years' continuous residence in this country, to be registered as citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies, and

therefore those to whom one would extend this liability are people who, by their own choice, have decided that this country is not their home. That, I believe, is a further justification for taking this opportunity to review what I have briefly called the five-year rule.
I do not believe that either my right hon. Friend or any other hon. Member can justify circumstances in which immigrants who have been in this country for six, seven or eight years and who are guilty of serious offences for which a court would not hesitate to recommend, and the Home Secretary would not hesitate to confirm, deportation, should be free of that possibility simply because of a figure written into a Measure of 10 years ago.
This is ripe for revision now. I do not know whether the Government, at this stage or subsequently, are prepared to consider doing so. But as time goes on, if it is allowed to elapse, the urgency and necessity of this revision will become ever clearer.

Mr. Bidwell: In Committee the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell) tabled a number of Amendments—I believe that he suffered from an abcess which made him retire from the Committee temporarily—and I tabled some which would have reduced the qualifying period to three years instead of 10 years.
I had in mind that as we were moving towards the concept of twinning the intake of alien and Commonwealth workers into this country, it would be right to afford them the facility of citizenship rights after three years and that the five-year period should not apply. If we were progressing in a logical and decent British way, that would be the direction in which we would be heading.
However, we are not heading in that direction by this Measure, and because of the illogicalities both in regard to patriality and the fact that we are not twinning, the situation confronting alien and Commonwealth workers coming here is such that the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West is able to play ducks and drakes with the Bill, which is what he proceeded to do when he joined the Standing Committee.
The right hon. Gentleman is, of course, trying to put the engines in reverse and


to place in jeopardy a number of people who came to this country at our invitation to earn a livelihood and exercise their rights under the 1962 Act, as amended by the 1968 Act. They want their families around them, and it is to be regretted that the Home Secretary, over the appeals system, has taken a step backwards.
One cannot overlook the sinister purposes of the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West, particularly in his desire to put these people in jeopardy. It is wicked for the right hon. Gentleman to make such proposals, particularly when one has regard to his responsibilities as, in a sense, an employer, as a former Minister of the Crown and as the right hon. Gentleman who, in 1962, when responsible for health matters, urged the recruitment of coloured people from overseas into the British hospital services. That has been exposed to us in more glaring form in remarks made by the Common Market negotiator, the right hon. and learned Member for Hexham (Mr. Rippon), in saying that during the right hon. Gentleman's period as Minister of Health he had said that there was no need to raise British nurses' pay because he could recruit labour in the markets overseas for the hospital services.

Mr. Powell: rose—

Mr. Bidwell: I will give way in a moment. It therefore makes his situation all that much more despicable in my view.

Mr. Powell: Since the hon. Member has sought to place on the record of the House the same falsehood as he sought to place upon the record of the Committee, I will again state that my right hon. and learned Friend, the Member for Hexham admitted that he had no foundation whatsoever for the statement which he attributed to me in that interview.

Mr. Bidwell: The right hon. and learned Member for Hexham did no such thing. If the exchanges of letters which the right hon. Gentleman had with his right hon. and learned Friend on this matter were supposed to amount to a retraction on the part of the right hon. and learned Member for Hexham, I invite any Member of the House to look very carefully at the wording used by

the right hon. and learned Member for Hexham. In effect, what he was doing in those exchanges was inviting the right hon. Gentleman to prove further the exact words but not withdrawing the substance; the words he used meant that he was not making a retraction.

Mr. Powell: The right hon. and learned Member for Hexham attributed words to me and attributed a statement to me. I asked him to refer me to the circumstances or occasion on which I made that statement, and he admitted that he was unable to do so.

Mr. Bidwell: What he was admitting in that exchange of correspondence is that he—[HON. MEMBERS: "Withdraw."]—was not recollecting the exact words. I am not withdrawing—I do not believe that the right hon. and learned Member for Hexham would withdraw either—and I make a public statement to that effect. I put it on the record deliberately in the Committee proceedings and deliberately in this debate, because it is about time that in this respect the phoniness of the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West was completely exposed, in the way in which it has been successfully exposed since he has entered debates in this Parliament, which he did in a very belated way.
Returning to the substance of the Amendments, I welcome the promise made by the Home Secretary in Committee. I will not say that I am highly delighted, because that might upset my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney, Central (Mr. Clinton Davis). On Second Reading, the Home Secretary said that the Bill did not worsen the situation for immigrants in Britain at present. But he subsequently found out that that was not the case. Therefore, I am pleased that he sought to set this right by this series of Amendments. He does not quite succeed, as my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rowley Regis and Tipton (Mr. Peter Archer) has pointed out by his further observations, but I know that that is his solemn intention. We can deduce that from the speech he made.
On the question of the span of time, we have customarily looked at people as "belonging", and that is what the argument about the five years is all about.


Historically, as the hon. Member for Barry (Mr. Gower) suggested, we have become attached to the concept that when someone from overseas has been here over a five-year period, when he may opt for citizenship, that is a fair amount of time.
My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rowley Regis and Tipton has voiced the anxieties felt by members of the immigrant community who do not feel able to take advantage of Commonwealth citizenship rights under the British Nationality Act, 1948, and therefore take naturalisation or British citizenship. One reason for my hon. and learned Friend raising this question was conversations I have had with him. I want the Secretary of State to take full cognisance of all the Commonwealth considerations. Half the population of the Commonwealth are Indians—550 million. I am told by immigrant constituents of mine that only a small proportion of them take advantage of the British Nationality Act, 1948. When the right hon. Gentleman understands the reason for that he will better understand the fears of a person who has lived in this country for, say, 20 years and who has, perhaps, built up a business here. I have in mind a factory owner here who is also a property owner in India.
9.30 p.m.
The difficulty about Commonwealth citizens who have the necessary five-year residence qualification taking up citizenship is that the Indian Government, for example, do not recognise dual citizenship. The taking of British nationality by an Indian immigrant affects property interests in India. People who have been in Britain for as long as 10 years are afraid when they leave Britain, because the Bill and the regulations arising from it will impose upon immigration control officers a degree of diligence which will involve interrogation. The Home Secretary should not underestimate this point or the difficulties which will arise for immigration control officers.
People cannot carry a collection of Indian passports. When a passport is renewed at the High Commission office here the old passport must be relinquished. The certificate of departure matching the certificate of entry has a more significant meaning than the Secre

tary of State was disposed to think that it might have.

Mr. John Biggs-Davison: The hon. Gentleman has spoken of a reluctance among immigrants in his constituency to assume British citizenship. Should not those who settle here have an undivided allegiance instead of trying to have the best of two countries?

Mr. Bidwell: Life is not as simple as that. The hon. Member, who has a fairly wide international experience, would be able to approach these matters with more competence than he customarily does if he understood them better.
Immigrants coming to work here do not know what the country is like, except by hearsay from relatives. They do not always have any firm idea of how long they will stay. I am sure that when relatives of mine emigrated to Australia they could not have had any firm idea of the length of time which would pass before they would feel sufficiently at home there to want to acquire Australian citizenship. There are always divided loyalties; there is always the thought that one might wish to go back, and we have the additional complication of property rights and so on.
But property factors can be of some advantage. I know that the hon. Gentleman is interested in using overseas aid in a most intelligent way. When I was in India I found that as a result of earnings in this country certain things were blossoming in the Punjab, in the Jalandhar city area, which could be highly commended. It seems that certain property rights have been established both in that country and here, by virtue of settlement.
Children of Indian parents who were brought here as babies or were born here are now pure patrials under the Bill. If one asks them whether they are Indian or British, they will sometimes reply that they regard themselves as a bit of both. They look Indian, with their dark skin and dark hair, but they do not always dress as Indians. They speak like Cockneys, and do not like curry. That is the reality of the immigration situation, and the sooner hon. Members like the hon. Member for Chigwell (Mr. Biggs-Davison) and the nation as a whole understand these matters, the more intelligently will they be able to go


about their business of having a decent immigration control system and a decent race relations system, free of colour and ethnic discrimination. We are going some way towards that. The more we talk about it, the more we are likely to achieve it.
I have spoken for longer than I intended, but I have been provoked by interruptions, especially from the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, Southwest. He calls me his sparring partner, and I did not want to let him down this evening.
I hope that the Home Secretary will take seriously into account the difficulty—it may be only transitional, as we are having a new Bill—experienced by many immigrants having popped back to their land of origin to a funeral or wedding. More and more of them are becoming affluent in this country. In my constituency we have a branch of Air India which has facilitated travel to India. It has quite a personable office, which is a credit to the neighbourhood, and in it there is a beautiful girl wearing a sari. There will be more and more of such return trips by many people who have not taken British nationality and who want to come back again. They feel that they are as much British as they are Indian, yet they believe that because of the Bill they are having to suffer a far more thorough interrogation at Heathrow Airport now.

Mr. Maudling: The debate has gone a little wide of the Amendments—

Mr. Bidwell: I tabled a probing Amendment to get off my chest what I have just got off it. Therefore, I shall not seek to move that Amendment, and shall thus be saving time.

Mr. Maudling: I do not know whether it is a question of fair exchange being no robbery, because I have not seen the other Amendment. The Clause deals only with exemption from deportation for certain existing residents. The purpose of my Amendments is solely to change the Clause in two particular regards, in order to carry out the undertaking that I would not change the situation of people already here. That is all that the discussion is about.
The proposal of my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South

west (Mr. Powell) is to extend the five-year term to 10 years, though, as he pointed out, 10 was an arbitrary figure and he was not particularly insistent on it. What he sought was a longer period. I am not persuaded that that would be wise. The five-year period is a term used in many ways in this type of legislation, and I do not see the justification for changing it now. People coming in future, as my right hon. Friend pointed out, will obtain exemptions from deportation, which we are talking about, not by the effluxion of time but by registration. In discussing the Amendments, we are talking about those who are already here. I cannot see the justification for using this occasion to extend from five to 10 or any other number the period of years which they have to go through to earn exemption.
It is very important to try to carry out the principle that in the Bill we are not taking action against people already here. I may be slightly out of order in referring to people coming in the future, but perhaps you will be indulgent, Mr. Speaker. As I have said, for them we are not extending the period of years, but are introducing a different system, of registration. To extend the period of years would not be consistent with what we are doing with people coming in future, and certainly not with the undertaking I have given about not doing harm to those already here. For those reasons, I cannot accept my right hon. Friend's Amendment to my Amendments or to the Clause.
I hope that the House will accept that what I am doing in the Amendments is to carry out the undertakings I gave in Committee. The hon. and learned Member for Rowley Regis and Tipton (Mr. Peter Archer) referred to Amendment No. 37, which says that a person ordinarily resident here already shall not, for the purpose of counting his time here, lose any time that he overstays his leave. The reason is simply to bring the provision into line with existing legislation. Section 7(2) of the Commonwealth Immigrants Act, 1962 makes that provision. If I did not make it, I should be worsening the position of people already here.

Mr. Peter Archer: I hope that the right hon. Gentleman was clear that I was not complaining about what he was doing.

Mr. Maudling: The hon. and learned Gentleman seemed to think that the purpose of Amendment No. 37 was connected with the suggestion of an amnesty. It is not. But that question might well be considered on Third Reading. I am not sure, but it seems to me that it is not a matter arising on this Amendment.
I do not find very valid the hon. and learned Gntleman's other point on my Amendment which was whether in practice people who go on holiday and so on can come back to this country again without great difficulty. This is a matter of administration, not of law. The Amendments are concerned solely to continue the existing situation.
I confirm that the phrase "ordinarily resident" is interpreted in common sense terms. If a man goes on holiday or makes a short visit home, he does not break his period of ordinary residence. If he went for a year or so, that might be another matter. A holiday does not break the period of ordinary residence, but a longer stay would.
The position about evidence of how long a person has been abroad will be the same after acceptance of the Amendment as it is now and as it has been for several years. Immigrants already here often go on holiday and have to present documents to show, when they come back, how long they have been out of the country. This is a matter of administration, not of law.
I will look at the current administration to see whether there are any difficulties in practice arising about people who have been on holiday and, on return, being unable to prove that they are "ordinarily resident". I will look at the question of administration, but it is nothing to do with the Amendment.

Mr. Peter Archer: Under the existing law, it is possible for a person to be away for two years, or up to two years. I have had representations on this matter. We should be clear about what a "short period" is.

9.45 p.m.

Mr. Maudling: I will look at that point. It is a question of interpretation rather than of statute.
The point raised by Amendment No. 94 would arise only in a small number

of circumstances when the question of family deportation arises. It would arise in the case of the head of family who is liable to deportation—in other words, when he has been here for less than five years. If the members of the family concerned have been here for five years, it would not arise because they would have gained exemption in their own right. Therefore, this point could arise only when both the head of the family and other members of the family had been here for less than five years. Acceptance of the Amendment would mean that the head of the family but not the other members of it would be liable to deportation. That would create a considerable anomaly. I do not think that acceptance of Amendment No. 94 would produce a sensible result. It would arise only in the case of someone who had not earned, by the period that he had been here, exemption from deportation. It would not apply to people exempted in their own right.

Mr. Peter Archer: What about the position of someone to be deported under Clause 3(5)(b)? According to the right hon. Gentleman's Amendment, he would not be liable to deportation, even if he had not been here five years.

Mr. Maudling: People would be liable to be removed under the "conducive to public good" provision as the Bill stands. But I propose that Commonwealth citizens already here should be in the same situation as they are now—in other words, not liable to be deported on non-conducive grounds.
The Government's Amendments are designed to carry out the undertaking that we shall not detract from the position of people who are already here. I cannot accept the Amendment of my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West as I do not think that it would be in keeping with the spirit or general principles of the Bill.

Amendment agreed to.

Further Amendments made: No. 35, in page 9, line 8, leave out 'been settled' and insert:
'or, if more than five years have elapsed since the end of July, 1971, at all times since the end of that month been ordinarily resident'.

No. 36, in line 12, leave out been settled 'and insert:
'or, if more than five years have elapsed since the end of July, 1971, at all times since the end of that month been ordinarily resident'.

No. 37, in line 13, at end insert:
( ) A person who has at any time become ordinarily resident in the United Kingdom or in any of the Islands shall not be treated for the purposes of this section as having ceased to be so by reason only of his having remained there in breach of the immigration laws.

No. 38, in line 14, leave out from beginning to 'was' in line 16 and insert:
(2) The 'last five years' before the material time under subsection (1)(b) or (c) above is to be taken as a period amounting in total to five years exclusive of any time during which the person claiming exemption under this section'.—[Mr. Maudling.]

Mr. Powell: I beg to move Amendment No. 101, in page 9, line 18, leave out from 'Islands' to end of line 20.
This Amendment and Amendment No. 102—page 9, line 24, leave out paragraph (b)—hang together.
My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has just explained the effect of subsection (2), namely, that if a person who can claim the five-year rule has been or is during any part of the five years which he would like to count imprisoned or detained for six months or more, the six months is added on to the five years, so that he has to do five years six months. It is illogical to select a minimum period of six months for this purpose.
Earlier today, the House agreed that deportation was often right and justified when the conviction carried a much lesser penalty than imprisonment for six months. There could easily be a case in which a person seeking to claim exemption had been imprisoned not once but two or three times during the five years but in each case for shorter periods than six months. It would be absurd and scandalous that he should still be able to claim a clean sheet during the five-year period for exemption.
I do not feel that this limitation is justified. It would be much more logical that any period during which the person had been imprisoned or detained should be added to the five-year period as that which must have elapsed before the immunity was gained.

Mr. Sharples: The effect of the Amendment would be to withdraw from the Irish or Commonwealth citizen who had been accepted for settlement by the end of July, 1971, the exemption from deportation that he is to obtain under the Bill on completion of five years' residence here free of conditions if he was at any time during the previous five years sentenced to imprisonment or detention.
I do not think my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, Southwest (Mr. Powell) will be surprised when I advise the House not to accept the Amendment.

Mr. Powell: I accept, and I hope that my hon. Friend will treat me as accepting, the effect of my right hon. Friend's Amendment to the subsection which the House has just made, so that, given that Amendment, the effect of my Amendment would simply be to add to the five-year period which has to be worked shorter periods than six months, if necessary.

Mr. Sharples: But my right hon. Friend appreciates, I am sure, that the loss of rights which derive from the six months period is in the existing law.
The effect of the Amendment would be to remove from a Commonwealth or Irish citizen who had received a sentence of less than six months, or had been sentence to be detained for even one day, the exemption from deportation which he already has. It worsens the position of those already here. My right hon. Friend will have heard the debate we had on the last group of Amendments. It is the firm intention of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State that the position of those already here should not be worsened. The Amendment would worsen the position of those already here.
It may well be said that this lies within the discretion of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State. None the less, there are people already here who may have suffered a very short period of detention during the previous five years and it would add to their anxieties unnecessarily. It would be wrong to accept the Amendment. I therefore advise the House to reject it.

Amendment negatived.

Amendment made: No. 39, in page 9, line 19, leave out 'if'.—[Mr. Maudling.]

Clause 8

EXCEPTIONS FOR SEAMEN, AIRCREWS AND OTHER SPECIAL CASES

Mr. Callaghan: I beg to move Amendment No. 40, in page 10, line 16, leave out subsection (2).
The provision which the Amendment seeks to delete reads as follows:
The Secretary of State may by order exempt any person or class of persons, either unconditionally or subject to such conditions as may be imposed by or under the order, from all or any of the provisions of this Act relating to those who are not patrial.
The rubric says:
Exceptions for seamen, aircrews and other special cases".
I think the intention of the Clause is certainly to deal with these limited groups of people, such as the crew of a ship or the crew of an aircraft, but, as my hon. and learned Friend, the Member for Dulwich (Mr. S. C. Silkin) pointed out in Committee, there is in the Clause, whatever may be the intention of the Clause, nothing which prevents the Home Secretary from using this subsection to modify the whole purpose of the Bill in relation to, for example, immigrants coming from the European Economic Community if we decide that we should enter into the arrangements with the other countries at the end of the negotiations. The purpose of this discussion is to try to secure some information from the Government as to what effect our entry into the E.E.C. would have, what impact it would have, on the Bill.
I would try to draw up a model, as it were, of future immigration into this country—clearly, it must be a model susceptible to a lot of refinements—once we have the pattern which will emerge eventually when the Bill becomes an Act; that is to say, assuming, if I may, for the purpose of the model, that the question of the Kenyan Asians, and of those affected in some way, who have been admitted over a period, is not a permanent problem, and that we have met the temporary phenomenon. I am referring to the large number of dependants who have been coming here in recent years in order to join workers who arrived some years earlier. We have seen, those of us who have studied the statistics, that the figure of dependants is now taking a

steep dive or curve, and over a period of two or three years there will probably be a substantial restriction in the number of the vouchers which have been issued. This has dwindled even more substantially. Let us push the, as it were, temporary factors, on one side for the purpose of my rough and ready model.
I would put it to the House, as a sort of working hypothesis, that the number of immigrants we are likely to get from the Commonwealth each year—and the House will accept that this is a rough and ready estimate—will be possibly about 8,000; say, 2,000 workers and, say, three dependants each; about 8,000 people altogether. Then there would be, from countries outside the E.E.C, of which the largest are Spain and the United States, perhaps another 15,000. Then, finally, from the E.E.C, as enlarged, there might be a total of, say, 12,000 to 15,000. Add all these three together and the permanent pattern of immigration might be of, say, 35,000 to 40,000 in a year—round about that.

Mr. Powell: At approximately what date, very roughly, does the right hon. Gentleman expect this pattern to be established?

Mr. Callaghan: I am much obliged to the right hon. Gentleman. For dependants, I think it would come within five or six years, probably not much longer, although my opinion is worth very little on this. The downward curve has been so steep, although it has decelerated, that I think it will flatten out fairly quickly. With the Kenya Asians, this will depend on the policy of the Government—which I cannot foretell, and I do not suppose the Home Secretary can—on the rate of entry, although he has recently doubled the number of vouchers. I cannot put a useful term on that.
Assuming that this will become a permanent Act, it is reasonable to try to exclude the temporary phenomena when one wants to get a permanent picture. I have tried to do this, although no doubt what I am saying will be modified substantially by pressures over the years. This is the kind of working model which I would expect. If I am right in saying, taking everybody coming into the country, black, white, brown or yellow, from the E.E.C., the Commonwealth or


anywhere else, the figure might settle down at 35,000 to 40,000. Then the E.E.C. immigrants might on that basis, if they do not come in in larger numbers—

It being Ten o'clock, further consideration of the Bill, as amended, stood adjourned.

Ordered,
That the Immigration Bill may be proceeded with at this day's Sitting, though opposed, until any hour.—[Mr. Clegg.]

Bill, as amended (in the Standing Commitee), further considered.

Mr. Callaghan: I make the large assumption that the number of people coming from the E.E.C. will be no greater than it is at present. That, again, is an assumption which will probably be falsified. If I am allowed to make that assumption, my first point is that we are considering a Bill which, if we enter the E.E.C, will be substantially and drastically modified in its basic principles literally within months.

Mr. Bidwell: We cannot have an adequate picture without thinking also of the likely exodus from this country of workers who go to work in Western Europe.

Mr. Callaghan: That would give the overall picture of the net inflow of immigrants and the outflow of those leaving, but it would not affect the principles upon which the Bill is based.
The point which I have been rather long in getting round to is this. The Government have placed before us a Bill whose purpose is to assimilate the principles of immigration for Commonwealth entrants and for aliens, and to amalgamate the best of both into one simple set of principles. I am saying—and this is an argument I have had many times in discussions on the Bill—that the Bill was introduced at the wrong time, if, within a matter of months, possibly 30 per cent. of the number of permanent immigrants coming into the country could be exempt from the provisions. It would have been far better if the Home Secretary had waited a little to see what the consequences were at the end of the negotiations.
We understand that the Government are not seeking to modify the provisions

of the Treaty of Rome or the directives that arise under it. My hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, North (Mr. Moyle) asked the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster about this, and the reply was:
We accept the Community's policy on freedom of movement of labour. We are clarifying in discussion with the Community certain details which affect the implementation of this policy in regard to this country but these were not discussed at the Ministerial negotiating conference on 11th and 12th May."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 20th May, 1971; Vol. 817, c. 342.]
Will the Home Secretary or the Minister of State tell us whether the details which affect the implementation are of such a character that the Home Secretary will use Clause 8(2) to make any exemptions that he has in mind? Will he give us details of what the changes in the implementation will amount to?
I emphasise again that the question of free movement runs entirely counter to the principles upon which the Bill is based, as I shall seek to demonstrate. I have drawn up seven important differences between the principles on which the Bill is based and the principles which now apply within the Community itself. I shall trouble the House, if I may, by reading some of them.
I take, first, Regulation No. 1612/68 on the freedom of movement of workers within the Community, and here I draw particular attention to the preamble and to Articles 1, 3, 10 and 11. The preamble provides that,
… equality of treatment shall be ensured in respect of everything relating to the actual carrying out of a wage-paid occupation and of access to housing, and also that obstacles to the mobility of the workers shall be eliminated, in particular as regards the worker's right to be joined by his family and the conditions for the integration of that family….
Article 1:
Any national of a Member State, irrespective of his place of permanent residence, shall be entitled to take up and carry on a wage-paid occupation in the territory of another Member State in accordance with the provisions governing the employment of nationals of that State imposed by law, regulation or administrative action.
I shall not dilate on these; I shall just read them to the House because I think that the House should know, as we have not had the information before, what the major provisions are.
Article 3(1):
… provisions imposed by law … of a Member State shall not apply if they restrict the right of non-nationals to apply for, offer, engage in or carry on employment or make it subject to conditions not prescribed in respect of nationals"—
and it goes on—
or if, while applicable irrespective of nationality, their exclusive of principal aim is to keep nationals of other Member States away from the employment offered".
That is pretty clear. I come now to Article 10, although there are others which, I suggest, are worthy of attention. Article 10 runs contrary to the principles on which the Bill is based—
(1) The following shall have the right to take up residence with a worker who is a national of one Member State employed in the territory of another Member State, whatever their nationality:—
(a) his spouse and their children under the age of 21 years, or dependent on him".
That is directly contrary to most of the things which we have been discusing in the past few months. It goes on—
(b) dependent relatives in the ascending line of the worker and his spouse".
There are other provisions in that Article with which I shall not trouble the House as I am just picking out the principle.
Article 11 flies in the face of what we have been trying to do in the Bill—
The spouse and children under the age of 21 years or dependent on a national of a Member State engaged in a wage-paid occupation or self-employed in the territory of another Member State shall have the right to engage in any wage-paid employment throughout the territory of that Member State …".
Without further detail, that is sufficient, I think, to show that the principles upon which we shall be operating and which will apply in respect of a considerable proportion of the people who would otherwise be affected by the Bill will in the event be abrogated.
I draw attention to just one other Regulation, No. 1251/70 of 29th June last. This is concerned with the rights of a worker to remain in the territory of a member State when he ceases to be employed there:
… it is important … to guarantee the worker residing in the territory of a Member State the right to remain in that territory when he ceases to be employed thereby reason of the fact that he has reached retirement age or by reason of permanent incapacity to work …".

When the worker
has arrived at the end of his working life he should have a sufficient period to decide where he wishes to establish his definitive residence; … the exercise by the worker of the right to remain implies that this right shall be extended to members of his family; … in the case of the decease of the worker during his working life, the right of the members of his family to remain must also be recognised and be the subject of special conditions.
Anyone who has listened to our debates or who has studied our proceedings in Committee will know that, time after time, we have been seeking to restrict the rights of Commonwealth citizens to do exactly that.
We have been indulging in a process that I always understood was not liked by the Conservative Party, namely, a process of levelling down. We have been levelling down rights of Commonwealth workers to equate with those of alien workers. Having done that, we find within a matter of months—it will obviously take some time to implement—that we shall be faced with a drastic alteration in the whole principles on which the Bill is based in relation to a large number of people.
I draw attention to seven important differences. First of all, Regulation 7 of the Draft Immigration (Control on Entry) Rules provides that leave to enter will normally be given for a limited period. As I understand the directives, that cannot apply except in special cases to those who come from E.E.C. countries. Articles 7 and 24 of our proposed draft regulations place a restriction on a foreign national or alien—or a "non-patrial" as I suppose I must refer to him—not only in regard to a specific employment, but also in regard to a specific post inside that employment. I find nothing in the E.E.C. regulations which would lead to that conclusion in respect of those nationals.
Draft Regulation 11 says that a passenger is not to be admitted for settlement as the wife, child or other dependant of a resident unless he holds a current entry certificate. That again runs directly contrary to the directive. I take a particular instance in the draft regulation 22 dealing with au pair girls. A girl admitted under an au pair arrangement has no claim to stay on in the United Kingdom in some other capacity. I do not think that would be true in


the event of our entry into the E.E.C. in regard to an E.E.C. national. Regulation 24 says that if a person coming to the United Kingdom has no work permit, leave to enter is refused. This is probably reconcilable, but it is not clear from reading the regulations.
Regulation 35—and I remind the House that these are regulations which Parliament will shortly be asked to agree—provides that the wife, and children under 18, of a person who has been admitted or is on the same occasion being admitted to the United Kingdom to take up his employment should be admitted for the period of his authorised stay with a condition restricting freedom to take employment. The E.E.C. regulations, as I read them, make it clear that no such restriction can be placed on the wife or dependant of someone who has a permit to come here from the E.E.C, but these regulations are proposing to implement them.
Regulation 37 provides that the resident must be able and willing to support and accommodate his dependants without recourse to public funds. These are essential requirements for the grant of admission. There is nothing in the E.E.C. which gives the Government authority to impose that particular regulation.
Finally, I turn to the aspect of the regulations which deals with control after entry. Regulation 35 provides power to deport such people and their dependants. Again the E.E.C. regulations make no such provision.
I have made my criticism that these provisions are ill-timed. In this particular regard it appears that, as in many other instances, they are particularly ill-timed and should have been left over until the negotiations were completed.
Will the Home Secretary be using Clause 8(2) to make the exemptions which will be required to conform to the E.E.C, assuming that we enter? Alternatively, does he intend to introduce a new Bill? If he intends to do neither of those things, is he satisfied that it is sufficient to use the rule-making power which he has, subject to submission to Parliament in due course for approval, to effect these changes? Those are the machinery questions.
10.15 p.m.
Finally, I should like to ask an important question of substance. Has the Home Office made a detailed study of this matter? If so, can the right hon. Gentleman tell us at this late stage what I have sought to secure from the Home Office consistently during the debates on the Bill: namely, whether my interpretation and understanding is right or wrong, accurate or inaccurate? Will he give us a clear picture of what the situation will be, assuming that the negotiations are successful? If he can do that, we shall at least know as much about the impact of the E.E.C. upon the Bill as we are likely to know. As it stands, I can only tell the House that I believe that we have been engaged in an exercise over two or three months now assimilating principles on this matter, or purporting to assimilate principles on this particular matter, when we are now going to hit a mine which will rip a hole in the bottom of this craft. I do not say that it will sink it; I think that there will be sufficient buoyancy in the tanks to keep it afloat. However, there is no doubt that it will substantially impair the efficiency of the Bill.
I think that we are entitled at this late stage in the negotiations with the E.E.C. and also at this late stage in the proceedings on the Bill to have a clear and full statement from the Government, which we have not had so far, about the impact of the negotiations, if successful, upon the provisions which we have been considering.

Mr. Maudling: The effect of the Amendment, which has been the peg on which the argument has been hung, would be to eliminate the power to exempt from immigration control classes of individuals. This power has been used in the past to give exemption, for example, to members and officials of other Governments, consular officials and officials of international organisations. These obligations to give exemption from immigration control to people in these categories shift and change with changing international obligations. Therefore, we must have the flexibility to exempt from immigration control certain classes of people.
In Committee we accepted an Amendment to the effect that no order exempting any class of people can be made without


going through the negative Resolution procedure. So there will be in future what there was not in the past—a parliamentary check on its use. The right hon. Gentleman was not challenging this, apart from a desire to discuss the European Economic Community and its effect on the Bill.
The right hon. Gentleman asked whether we would use Clause 8 (2), if we join the Common Market, to deal with its free movement of labour provisions. The answer is: certainly not; it has nothing to do with it. Clause 8(2) gives exemption from immigration control. There is no question, under the rules of the E.E.C., of giving anyone exemption from immigration control.
The change will be made in the regulations which will be made under the Act. No amendment is necessary to the Bill. The necessary changes can and will be made, if the House approves our entry to the E.E.C., through amendments in the regulations which will now be subject to the negative Resolution procedure. It is therefore probably outside the scope of the Bill to go into the merits of the E.E.C. negotiations and the provisions regarding the free movement of labour.
The situation will change remarkably if we join the E.E.C, because we shall be joining a community, and it will make a fundamental difference. There will be this free movement of labour in and out, as the hon. Member for Southall (Mr. Bidwell) said, and it will be easier for people to come here from the E.E.C. countries to take up work, and for our people to go to the E.E.C. countries.

Mr. Stanley Orme: The right hon. Gentleman referred to our people being able to go to the E.E.C. countries. There have been recent reports that some of the E.E.C. countries would object to coloured British citizens from Commonwealth countries going into the E.E.C. Has that matter been discussed? As with the question of work permits, and so on, the British people have been given no information about that.

Mr. Maudling: That is part of the negotiations—

Mr. Orme: The right hon. Gentleman should know about it.

Mr. Maudling: I have taken the precaution of finding out about it.

Mr. Hugh Fraser: It is important to know where we stand, especially on the question of the associated status of the E.E.C. What is the position about immigration control over persons in the associated States of the E.E.C. coming into Europe? That is vital to the consideration of Commonwealth immigration, and it behoves my right hon. Friend to tell us how the matter stands.
The West Indies, if we are successful, have been offered associated status. Similarly, some of the African States will be given associated status. That will mean that the citizens of the Côte d'Ivoire and Senegal will have associated status. It behoves the Government to explain how the matter stands.

Mr. Maudling: The time for the House to decide whether the consequences, in this respect, or any other, of the negotiations are acceptable in the national interest is not now, but when the results of the negotiations are laid before the House in the form of a White Paper. As I understand it, the provision for the free movement of labour refers to nationals of the Community members, and therefore would refer to United Kingdom nationals, but detailed discussions are going on about the definition of national for this purpose, because there are complicated points about that. There is no question of discrimination on the basis of colour. The time to discuss this is when the negotiations are complete, and when the White Paper is here and we have these detailed matters before us.
The basic principle of the Community is freedom of movement of labour, for the purpose of taking employment, of nationals of the member States of the Community, and that is capable of being contained within the Bill by necessary amendments to the regulations which the Bill will give us power to bring into effect, and which will be subject to Parliamentary control when they are made.

Sir Derek Walker-Smith: My right hon. Friend referred to the White Paper in this context. Are we to understand that when the White Paper is produced within a matter of a few


weeks it will deal fully and exhaustively with this question of nationals, and who is covered by that term? I ask that because my right hon. Friend will appreciate that the word "nationals", which is the key word in the Treaty of Rome, and in the regulations of the Community—which the right hon. Member for Cardiff, South-East (Mr. Callaghan) has read—is not a word which we have been accustomed to apply.
We refer to certain types of citizenship, and the concept of nationals in that sense is a new one in English law. We have reached this stage in the negotiations, and so far as the House knows nothing has been done to interpret these phrases and correlate our position and our law to the requirements of the Community. Is this all going to be spelled out in the White Paper?
I am sorry to have been so long, but this is my last question. My right hon. Friend referred to parliamentary control over the Statutory Instruments and Regulations, but surely Parliament will not be able, by the negative Resolution procedure, to annul an Instrument which is necessary to give effect to the requirements of the Treaty of Rome? My right hon. and learned Friend is tempting me into wider fields of argument about the pros and cons of membership of the Community, which inevitably gives preferential treatment to the other members of the Community. It means nothing unless it does. I take the point about national and United Kingdom citizens. That is why we are having detailed discussions about the interpretation. I would expect that there would be broader alignment between the two concepts, but discussions are proceeding on this matter as on others, and the House cannot take a decision until the necessary information is laid before the House when the time comes for a decision. As much as we enjoy the many debates, I think that we shall enjoy them better on a relevant Motion than we will tonight when this debate is not relevant.
Clause 8(2) is not relevant here because there is nothing in the Treaty of Rome which would oblige us to exempt people from immigration control. It will certainly oblige us to give preferential position to Community members. This is part of being a Community. I am a

little surprised by the right hon. Member for Cardiff, South-East who has a good deal to say these days about the Common Market, who seemed to think that there was something very wrong in the idea, if we join, of people from other Community countries having preference over the rest of the world.
But that is surely the basis on which his Government conducted their negotiations. It has always been accepted—it always must have been—that if they accepted the free movement of labour—I have no reason to believe that the Labour Government were against these provisions of the Treaty of Rome; they certainly did not say so—they could either give the rest of the Community the preference over the rest of the world, including the Commonwealth, or they could give complete freedom of movement for the rest of the world and the whole of the Commonwealth.
This is the dilemma of the right hon. Gentleman. If he is going to make a great point that it would be wrong to give this preference, he must explain how he and his Government negotiated for some time on precisely that basis.

Mr. Callaghan: What I have asked for and failed to get throughout this debate is information. That is what I am asking for. I have expressed no particular view—I was careful not to do so this evening—on this matter. What I want to know is how far the Bill is consistent with the Treaty. I pointed out—so far, the Home Secretary has done nothing to remove my doubts—that there are at least seven important provisions in which the Bill is inconsistent. I was not proposing to introduce such a Bill as he has introduced, and I doubt whether he would have introduced it if he had not been saddled with it as the result of a foolish election pledge.

Mr. Maudling: I repeat that joining the European Economic Community would not call for any amendment of this Bill. That seems to be a pretty adequate answer to the hon. Gentleman's point.

Miss Joan Lestor: Before the right hon. Gentleman sits down, would he clarify two things for me arising out of what my right hon. Friend


the Member for Cardiff, South-East (Mr. Callaghan) said? First, the Bill is supposed to be bringing together the entry of Commonwealth people and aliens. But he has already said that, if we enter the E.E.C, this will not apply, because preference will be given to members of the E.E.C. over the Commonwealth. Therefore, the basis of the Bill is clearly in doubt if we enter.
I should like the right hon. Gentleman to try to answer a question which several of us have put over a long period and to which we cannot get an answer. Would Commonwealth people working in this country who are not citizens of this country have to take out citizenship before they would be acceptable as Community workers? Many of them are not citizens but are permanent residents. I cannot understand the reluctance of the Government to give an answer. As I read the Treaty of Rome this is crystal clear; they must be citizens.
Second, surely the Bill is applicable to, and must be seen in conjunction with, what may happen if we enter the E.E.C. That is, that, while there will be free

movement of labour for those people in E.E.C. countries, this will surely not apply to the restrictions which the right hon. Gentleman is imposing in the Bill, when he says that he is bringing both sides together, because Commonwealth people will come here for a year, which can be renewed at the will of the Home Secretary, but aliens who are members of E.E.C. will not be so restricted.

Mr. Maudling: I will explain the position again. Joining the Community means the free movement of labour. It means that people living in other countries of the Community will be able to come here free of restriction to seek work. At present, under the legislation of the Labour Government, there is a restriction on Commonwealth entrants. Thus, one cannot reconcile the position of the Community with the legislation enacted by the Labour Government—[HON. MEMBERS: "Answer."]—unless one took the sort of view to which I referred in relation to Commonwealth citizens compared with citizens of the Community, and I have never heard hon. Gentlemen opposite suggest that course.

Mr. Orme: The right hon. Gentleman gave some interesting information when he referred to discussions going on in the E.E.C. about the definition of "nationals". He did not allay our fears and suspicions about the objections being raised by some member countries of the Community about coloured immigrants in Britain perhaps seeking work in those countries.
Why cannot we have a clear answer to our questions? We are worried because there is good reason to think that some E.E.C. countries—leaving aside France, which makes special arrangements for Algerians—are taking their white policies seriously. It is all very well for the Home Secretary to speak of the free movement of labour in the Community, but what about the special associate membership which the West Indies have been offered? How will that fit in? I trust that all these matters will be covered in the White Paper.
I am raising these points in an anti-racial sense. There are others in Britain who raise them in a racial sense.

Mr. Selwyn Gummer: Does the hon. Gentleman think it would help towards racial understanding in Britain if he would be willing not just to say that he is suspicious but to say which countries he suspects, because I suspect that he is mentioning a suspicion simply to stir up worries about the Community. Is he aware that under the Treaty of Rome the arrangement for the free movement of labour apply to all Community members in a totally reciprocal way, but not to those with associate status?

Mr. Orme: There is more to it than the free movement of labour. For example, why are discussions going on about nationality?
Our doubts and suspicions are based on informed reports, though we do not get information from the Government or the E.E.C. We must rely on Press reports, and it is clear that considerable discussion is going on in the Six about the free movement of Commonwealth labour at present in this country. Because we are having such difficulty in getting information on this subject, we are having to raise this issue at every possible opportunity.

Mr. Alexander W. Lyon: The debate is a rather amusing one.

Mr. Orme: It is now that my hon. Friend has risen to speak.

Mr. Lyon: It started in Committee when a query was put to the Under-Secretary about the meaning of Clause 8(2). Unfortunately, my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Dulwich (Mr. S. C. Silkin) then intervened to say that the terms might cover the regulations that would be introduced affecting the E.E.C, whereupon my right hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South-East (Mr. Callaghan) said that he had not realised that before and began to make a speech about the E.E.C. He did the same tonight. Curiously enough, we have a goodly audience, mostly of anti-marketeers.

Mr. Orme: There are a lot in the House. We are the majority.

Mr. Lyon: It would have been, perhaps a little more appropriate if we had had a balanced discussion about the movement of labour within the E.E.C. upon a resolution particularly apt for that point. We could have had a proper reply from the Government about the discussions taking place with the E.E.C. on the matter. But since some of my hon. Friends have raised the question of the E.E.C. and its movement of labour policies, to try to redress the balance a little one ought, perhaps, to indicate, as has already been indicated to some extent, that the fears which have been aroused may not be as substantial in fact as they are in psychology.
There is a free movement of labour in the E.E.C. But it is accorded only to nationals of the Community. The difficulty about nationality, which is the subject of discussion between Britain and the E.E.C, arises not out of any antipathy of the E.E.C. to anybody coming from abroad but out of the nature of nationality as we in Britain understand it.
As the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell) has repeatedly pointed out during the Bill's passage, we have no workable definition of nationality. Therefore, we are in difficulties in defining who are nationals when it comes to the E.E.C Under the British


Nationality Act, we accord the claim of citizenship to two different types of people, namely, United Kingdom citizens—that is, citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies—and Commonwealth citizens. "Commonwealth citizens" includes everybody in the designated territories, which is practically the whole of the Commonwealth. If we are to say that those are nationals, clearly there would be the possibility of an influx into the E.E.C. countries about which they would be very concerned—and so should we.

Mr. Orme: Oh.

Mr. Lyon: We must remember that the preceding Conservative Government, the Labour Government and now this Government have all introduced legislation to restrict the right of Commonwealth citizens to enter Britain. It is not a question of the Community but of who we ourselves say are nationals and, therefore, whom the E.E.C. should regard as nationals. Under the terms of the Bill, the obvious solution would be to say that patrials were nationals, and that patrials, therefore, would have the right of free movement. To discover whether that is the solution that will emerge we will have to wait for the famous White Paper which the right hon. and learned Member for Hertfordshire, East (Sir D. Walker-Smith) and everyone else is waiting for.
As for the real size of the problem, may I say this to allay the fears of my hon. Friend the Member for Salford, West (Mr. Orme). The position has been that although there was a considerable movement of labour, particularly from Southern Italy in the early years of the Community, that movement has been declining, even in geometric terms, over the period that the Community has been in existence. The more that Southern Italy in particular has shared in the common economic growth of the Community the more that flow has been staunched.
The position in the Community now is that there is an increasing demand for labour from outside of the Community. The influx of immigrants from outside the Community has been growing apace. In 1970 it was four times what it was in 1965. The rate of immigration will allow easily for the kind of flows in

from the Commonwealth which we are contemplating in the light of the Bill.
It is my great hope that it will require considerably more and that all the efforts of successive Governments to try to get over this problem by restricting the flow will be negated by the demand for labour, if, as I expect, the Community grows apace when we enter and it is enlarged. The demand for labour will have to be satisfied from somewhere and if it is to be satisfied in this country it is highly likely that it will be satisfied from Commonwealth countries. Far from being an anti-black move, it seems that entering the Community will lead to much more liberal legislation than our own.

Mr. Merlyn Rees: My hon. Friend the Member for York (Mr. Alexander W. Lyon) put his finger on the reason why in Committee, after many hours of discussion of an immigration policy, we thought that we had the right to know what the Government's thinking was on entry to the Common Market. We do not say that we should have known whether they were for or against entry, but we believe that it was wrong to make a major change in immigration policy before knowing the entry terms in the context of immigration rules and citizenship. This is a Bill based on new principles. Patriality is not citizenship, it is right of abode, it is purely a method of immigration. Our whole argument was that a government introducing such a Bill ought to tell us their thinking on a number of points.
The right hon. Gentleman said that it was simple—if we go into the Community, procedurally it is not a matter of 8(2), it is not a matter of the Bill as a whole; it comes under the rules under Clause 1 dealing with the general principles, which say that rules may be made by the Government of the day and it is these which matter.
The rules on immigration can only be implemented because of this Bill and we felt that we had every right to know what Government thinking was. We tried to use this opportunity, because we have failed on every other, to find out what it was that the Government were saying. It is not only a question of the rules. Eventually the Government will have to tell the House and country what their policy


will be on work permits. Under the 1962 Act work permits and employment vouchers were swept aside. This is the key to entry to this country. Until we know Government thinking on this we will not know the rate, scope and type of entry to this country. Maybe we will not know this until the Government have learned whether we are to enter Europe. It is relevant for us to discuss this, for Members to know whether they are for or against. It is one of the factors about which a large number of people in between the anti-marketeers and the pro-marketeers want more information one way or the other. It is apparently thought right to probe on sugar and fishing, but when anyone asks questions about labour movement we get no answer. Yet there are over a million foreign workers in Germany, and a million foreign workers in France. About 40 per cent. of the people living in Switzerland are foreign workers. We have done exactly the same thing by a different method, by absorbing into our working system large numbers of people from the Commonwealth. The same thing is happening all over Europe. All we are asking is that a Government who see fit at this time to introduce a new Immigration Bill with an effect on the movement of labour should give us the benefit of their thinking.
10.45 p.m.
I understand that there are special provisions in the E.E.C. for the entry of workers from the overseas territories. Are we to apply for similar rules for our workers from overseas territories? What will happen to Commonwealth citizens coming into this country on work permits when E.E.C. workers have to have priority for jobs? I am not arguing the merits of that, but just saying that the Government should tell us the position.
This is not a citizenship Bill, although citizenship is mentioned in the Long Title. My hon. Friend the Member for York (Mr. Alexander W. Lyon) revealed that apparently one of the problems for the Europeans is our curious laws of citizenship. They can say that again! Those laws, which were first laid down in curious fashion in 1948, are at the very least illogical, and it might well be that the logical European mind boggles at the illogicality of what we did then.
There are two aspects of that on which we should know the Government's thinking. We have debates about Kenyan Asians, who, under the 1968 Act, are non-belonging citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies. I bet that at Brussels they boggle at that, when we tell them about British subjects without citizenship. I wonder how that translates into French. There are belongers as well, who are people formerly living in the British Protectorates, British-protected persons. Where do we stand on them?
Before the large number of us who are not at the extremes of the Common Market issue to have to make up our minds, we have every right to know on labour movement, just as on sugar or fishing, what the Government think. It might well be that labour movement is the much more important factor in the changes to come, whether we are in or out of the E.E.C. Certainly it seems to be important both in Europe and here, and even the United States is now absorbing surplus population of the West Indies.
All that we are asking is that we should know the Government's thinking. All we have been told is that this does not come under subsection (2) and that we shall find out one day. We have tried and failed.

Mr. Maudling: The question of whether subsection (2) should or should not be in the Bill is totally irrelevant to the discussion about the Common Market and the free movement of labour. I do not think that the vote on the Amendment would be capable of an interpretation on that basis.
I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman that when the House takes its decision about the result of the negotiations, on whether we go in on certain terms or not, all relevant factors in joining the Community, including the consequences to the movement of labour, will then fall to be discussed and judged, as part of the general decision whether or not the whole negotiation package is acceptable.
The Bill will be equally apposite and appropriate whether the House decides to go in or stay out.

Mr. Hugh Fraser: May I ask a simple question? If we are to go into the


Common Market, does the Home Secretary agree that there will have to be harmonisation of the laws regarding these matters between ourselves and the Common Market? Clearly there is no possibility of harmonisation with this series of new laws.
Will my right hon. Friend explain how he will get round this. He would have to reproduce this after consultation with the Common Market and there will have to be redefinition of citizenship and patriality and all these things and, therefore, if we go in the House will have wasted a good deal of time.

Mr. Maudling: I have explained many times that if we were to accept the Treaty of Rome with all its regulations in their entirety this Bill would not call for amendment.

Mr. Callaghan: I agree that Clause 8(2) is not a convenient vehicle and is not a matter of substance, but we have had the same difficulties wherever we have chosen to alight to try to extract information. We have been told that this is not the appropriate place.
The Home Secretary has a habit of sliding out of a difficulty by pointing to what seems to be a debating point. It is not sufficient for him in substance to say that the Bill will not need to be amended because he knows this is a machinery Bill and that it is the regulations and rules made under it which will have to be amended.
It is clear, and I do not think the Home Secretary would deny it, that the principle on which the Bill is based will be completely eroded. The principle of attempting to assimilate these two conditions will be destroyed and we shall have to come back to the question of citizenship.
It may be that as a matter of machinery he will not need to come before us with a new Bill, but it is clear he will have to come before us with new regulations and rules, which will be subject to negative procedure and we shall have to accept them holus bolus or reject them. [Interruption.] If that is wrong I am glad to hear it. The Home Secretary tries to assuage the House by saying that entry would not have this

effect, but he knows there will have to be modifications and his right hon. Friend the Member for Stafford and Stone (Mr. Hugh Fraser) was right, as was his right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Hertfordshire, East (Sir D. Walker-Smith), on this matter.
There will have to be modifications of the principle on which the Bill is based and of the practice followed at the ports by those operating the principles of the Bill.

Amendment negatived.

Mr. Powell: I beg to move Amendment No. 103, in page 10, line 28, leave out from '1964)' to second 'a' in line 29.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Miss Harvie Anderson): It would also be convenient to discuss Amendment No. 104, in page 10, line 31, at end insert
'or a person who is a member of the family and forms part of the household of such a member or person'.

Mr. Powell: I am afraid this is extreme anticlimax. This Amendment is concerned with a very small point. Subsection (3) describes three classes of persons exempted from the provisions of the Act. The first are members of the diplomatic missions; the second are those who belong to the families or households of such members, and the third are those who have similar immunity to that of members of diplomatic missions.
The simple question I want to put is why it is right to exclude the households and families of persons who have like immunity with members of diplomatic missions. There may be some secret which explains this apparent anomaly. Perhaps I should explain that I am not a lover of diplomatic immunity or its extension. Indeed, in the early 1920s I opposed most of the measures brought before the House for an extension of it. But if we have it, and in so far as we have it, we should apply it consistently in the Bill. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister of State will be able to clear up the apparent difficulty.

Mr. Sharples: The provisions in the Bill following the existing provisions in the Aliens Restriction (Amendment) Act, 1919, as amended by the Diplomatic


Privileges Act, 1964, which gives exemption to certain people but which does not afford the same immunity to heads of certain missions and other international bodies the personnel of which are entitled to the same diplomatic immunity as diplomatic agents. The majority of these people are officials of international organisations and we are obliged to give the personnel immunity by agreements with other member states. In a certain number of cases we are obliged, also by agreement, to give immunity to the families of such people.
It has never been the intention of successive Governments to extend such immunity generally to the families of personnel in international organisations of this kind. The provision in the Bill follows the precedent which has existed for very many years, and we feel that the existing situation should be maintained. To accept the Amendment would give immunity to a larger number of people in this country not entitled to it now.

Mr. S. C. Silkin: Would the same answer be given if the same question were asked on Amendment No. 41?

Mr. Sharples: I will deal with Amendment No. 41 when we reach it.

Mr. Powell: I am obliged to my hon. Friend the Minister of State for his reply.
I take it that the general principle is that a mission is regarded as a whole and that the diplomatic immunity is given to the mission as such and that the family and household have also traditionally been included; whereas in the third category the immunity applies to individuals as individuals and not as members of a mission and that there is not, therefore, a similar ground for bringing in the family and household. If I have correctly apprehended my hon. Friend's point, I am grateful to him for elucidating the matter.
I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Mr. Sharples: I beg to move Amendment No. 41, in page 10, line 44, at end insert:
'or as a member of an international headquarters or defence organisation designated for

the time being by an Order in Council under section 1 of the International Headquarters and Defence Organisations Act 1964'.
The exemption from immigration control which is given by Clause 8(4)(c) to members of visiting forces is extended by this Amendment to members of international headquarters or defence organisations which are within the scope of the International Headquarters and Defence Organisations Act, 1964.
It was the intention of Parliament in 1964 that members of such bodies should in general be treated in the same way as members of visiting forces. The 1964 Act applied the Visiting Forces Act, 1952, to them with certain modifications. It is therefore appropriate that they should have the same degree of exemption from immigration control as members of visiting forces will have.
In answer to the point made by the hon. and learned Member for Dulwich (Mr. S. C. Silkin) on the last Amendment, I think that only when there are specific international agreements does the exemption apply to the families of such people.

Amendment agreed to.

11.0 p.m.

Mr. Sharples: I beg to move Amendment No. 42, in page 11, line 5, after '(4)' insert '(b) or (c)'
The Amendment is in exactly the same terms as one moved by the hon. and learned Member for Rowley Regis and Tipton (Mr. Peter Archer) in Committee. My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs undertook to consider the point. My hon. Friend has considered the point and thinks that the Amendment moved in Committee by the hon. and learned Gentleman was exactly right.

Amendment agreed to.

Clause 14

APPEALS AGAINST CONDITIONS

Amendment proposed: No. 46, in page 15, line 20, after 'good', insert:
'as being in the interests of national security or of the relations between the United Kingdom and any other country or for other reasons of a political nature'.—[Mr. Sharples.]

Question put, That the Amendment be made:—

The House divided: Ayes 189, Noes 158.

Division No. 380.]
AYES
[11.1 p.m.


Adley, Robert
Grylls, Michael
Page, Graham (Crosby)


Alison, Michael (Barkston Ash)
Gummer, Selwyn
Page, John (Harrow, W.)


Allason, James (Hemel Hempstead)
Hall, Miss Joan (Keighley)
Parkinson, Cecil (Enfield, W.)


Astor, John
Hamilton, Michael (Salisbury)
Percival, Ian


Atkins, Humphrey
Harrison, Brian (Maldon)
Pounder, Rafton


Awdry, Daniel
Harrison, Col. Sir Harwood (Eye)
Powell, Rt. Hn. J. Enoch


Baker, Kenneth (St. Marytebone)
Haselhurst, Alan
Price, David (Eastleigh)


Beamish, Col. Sir Tufton
Hastings, Stephen
Prior, Rt. Hn. J. M. L.


Bennett, Dr. Reginald (Gosport)
Hawkins, Paul
Proudfoot, Wilfred


Biffen, John
Hicks, Robert
Pym, Rt. Hn. Francis


Biggs-Davison, John
Hill, James (Southampton, Test)
Raison, Timothy


Blaker, Peter
Holland, Philip
Ramsden, Rt. Hn. James


Boardman, Tom (Leicester, S. W.)
Holt, Miss Mary
Redmond, Robert


Boscawen, Robert
Hornby, Richard
Reed, Laurance (Bolton, E.)


Bossom, Sir Clive
Hornsby-Smith, Rt. Hn. Dame Patricia
Rhys Williams, Sir Brandon


Bowden, Andrew
Howe, Hn. Sir Geoffrey (Reigate)
Roberts, Michael (Cardiff, N.)


Boyd-Carpenter, Rt. Hn. John
Howell, David (Guildford)
Roberts, Wyn (Conway)


Bray, Ronald
Howell, Ralph (Norfolk, N.)
Rost, Peter


Brinton, Sir Tatton
Hunt, John
Russell, Sir Ronald


Brocklebank-Fowler, Christopher
Hutchison, Michael Clark
Scott, Nicholas


Bruce-Gardyne, J.
James, David
Sharples, Richard


Buchanan-Smith, Alick (Angus, N &amp; M)
Jenkin, Patrick (Woodford)
Shaw, Michael (Sc'b'gh &amp; Whitby)


Buck, Antony
Jennings, J. C. (Burton)
Simeons, Charles


Burden, F. A.
Jessel, Toby
Sinclair, Sir George


Butler, Adam (Bosworth)
Kaberry, Sir Donald
Skeet, T. H. H.


Carlisle, Mark
Kimball, Marcus
Soref, Harold


Channon, Paul
King, Evelyn (Dorset, S.)
Spence, John


Chapman, Sydney
King, Tom (Bridgwater)
Sproat, Iain


Chataway, Rt. Hn. Christopher
Kinsey, J. R.
Stainton, Keith


Chichester-Clark, R.
Knox, David
Stanbrook, Ivor


Churchill, W. S.
Langford-Holt, Sir John
Stewart-Smith, D. G. (Belper)


Clarke, Kenneth (Rushcliffe)
Legge-Bourke, Sir Harry
Stoddart-Scott, Col. Sir M.


Clegg, Walter
Le Marchant, Spencer
Stokes, John


Cooke, Robert
Loveridge, John
Stuttaford, Dr. Tom


Coombs, Derek
Luce, R. N.
Taylor, Edward M. (G'gow, Cathcart)


Cooper, A. E.
McAdden, Sir Stephen
Taylor, Frank (Moss Side)


Cormack, Patrick
MacArthur, Ian
Taylor, Robert (Croydon, N. W.)


Costain, A. P.
McCrindle, R. A.
Tebbit, Norman


Critchley, Julian
McLaren, Martin
Temple, John M.


Crouch, David
McMaster, Stanley
Thomas, John stradling (Monmouth)


Curran, Charles
Macmillan, Maurice (Farnham)
Thompson, Sir Richard (Croydon, S.)


Dean, Paul
McNair-Wilson, Michael
Thorpe, Rt. Hn. Jeremy


Deedes, Rt. Hn. W. F.
Madel, David
Trafford, Dr. Anthony


Dixon, Piers
Mather, Carol
Tugendhat, Christopher


Dykes, Hugh
Maude, Angus
Turton, Rt. Hn. Sir Robin


Edwards, Nicholas (Pembroke)
Maudling, Rt. Hn. Reginald
van Straubenzee, W. R.


Elliot, Capt. Walter (Carshalton)
Maxwell-Hyslop, R. J.
Vaughan, Dr. Gerard


Elliott, R. W. (N'c'tle-upon-Tyne, N.)
Mayer, Sir Anthony
Waddington, David


Eyre, Reginald
Moate, Roger
Walder, David (Clitheroe)


Farr, John
Motyrteaux, James
Walker-Smith, Rt. Hn. Sir Derek


Fenner, Mrs. Peggy
Money, Ernle
Wall, Patrick


Fidler, Michael
Monks, Mrs. Connie
Ward, Dame Irene


Fisher, Nigel (Surbiton)
Monro, Hector
Weatherill, Bernard


Fookes, Miss Janet
Montgomery, Fergus
Wells, John (Maidstone)


Fowler, Norman
More, Jasper
White, Roger (Gravesend)


Fraser, Rt. Hn. Hugh (St'fford &amp; Stone)
Morgan, Geraint (Denbigh)
Wilkinson, John


Gibson-Watt, David
Morgan-Giles, Rear-Adm.
Wolrige-Gordon, Patrick


Glyn, Dr. Alan
Mudd, David
Wood, Rt. Hn. Richard


Goodhart, Philip
Murton, Oscar
Wylie, Rt. Hn. N. R.


Goodhew, Victor
Neave, Airey
Younger, Hn. George


Gorst, John
Normanton, Tom



Gower, Raymond
Onslow, Cranley
TELLERS FOR THE AYES:


Gray, Hamish
Oppenheim, Mrs. Sally
Mr. Tim Fortescue and


Green, Alan
Osborn, John
Mr. Keith Speed.


Griffiths, Eldon (Bury St. Edmunds)
Owen, Idris (Stockport, N.)





NOES


Albu, Austen
Blenkinsop, Arthur
Cocks, Michael (Bristol, S.)


Allaun, Frank (Salford, E.)
Boardman, H. (Leigh)
Cohen, Stanley


Archer, Peter (Rowley Regis)
Booth, Albert
Concannon, J. D.


Armstrong, Ernest
Buchanan, Richard (G'gow, Sp'burn)
Crawshaw, Richard


Ashton, Joe
Callaghan, Rt. Hn. James
Crosland, Rt. Hn. Anthony


Barnett, Joel
Campbell, I. (Dunbartonshire, W.)
Cunningham, G. (Islington, S. W.)


Beaney, Alan
Carter, Ray (Birmingh'm, Northfield)
Dalyell, Tam


Bidwell, Sydney
Carter-Jones, Lewis (Eccles)
Davidson, Arthur


Bishop, E. S.
Clark, David (Colne Valley)
Davies, [...] Elfed (Rhondda, E.)




Davies, Ifor (Cower)
John, Brynmor
Pavitt, Laurie


Davis, Clinton (Hackney, C.)
Johnson, James (K'ston-on-HulI, W.)
Pendry, Tom


Davis, Terry (Bromsgrove)
Johnson, Walter (Derby, S.)
Pentland, Norman


Dell, Rt. Hn. Edmund
Jones, Dan (Burnley)
Perry, Ernest G.


Dempsey, James
Jones, Rt. Hn. Sir Elwyn (W. Ham, S.)
Prescott, John


Doig, Peter
Jones, Gwynoro (Carmarthen)
Price, J. T. (Westhoughton)


Dormantd, J. D.
Jones, T. Alec (Rhondda, W.)
Price, William (Rugby)


Douglas, Dick (Stirlingshire, E.)
Kaufman, Gerald
Rees, Merlyn (Leeds, S.)


Douglas-Mann, Bruce
Kerr, Russell
Roberts, Albert (Normanton)


Duffy, A. E. P.
Kinnock, Neil
Roderick, Caerwyn E. (Br'c'n &amp; R'dnor)


Dunn, James A.
Lamond, James
Rodgers, William (Stockton-on-Tees)


Dunnett, Jack
Latham, Arthur
Roper, John


Edelman, Maurice
Lawson, George
Ross, Rt. Hn. William (Kilmarnock)


Edwards, William (Merioneth)
Leadbitter, Ted
Sheldon, Robert (Ashton-under-Lyne)


Ellis, Tom
Leonard, Dick
Shore, Rt. Hn. Peter (Stepney)


Evans, Fred
Lestor, Miss Joan
Short, Rt. Hn. Edward (N'c'tle-u-Tyne)


Faulds, Andrew
Lewis, Arthur (W. Ham, N.)
Short, Mrs. Renée (W'hampton, N. E.)


Fisher, Mrs. Doris (B'ham, Ladywood)
Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)
Silkin, Hn. S. C. (Dulwich)


Fletcher, Ted (Darlington)
Lomas, Kenneth
Sillars, James


Foley, Maurice
Lyon, Alexander W. (York)
Silverman, Julius


Fraser, John (Norwood)
McCartney, Hugh
Skinner, Dennis


Gilbert, Dr. John
McElhone, Frank
Smith, John (Lanarkshire, N.)


Ginsburg, David
McGuire, Michael
Spearing, Nigel


Golding, John
McMillan, Tom (Glasgow, C.)
Spriggs, Leslie


Gourlay, Harry
Mahon, Simon (Bootle)
Stallard, A. W.


Grant, George (Morpeth)
Marks, Kenneth
Steel, David


Grant, John D. (Islington, E.)
Marquand, David
Strang, Gavin


Griffiths, Eddie (Brightside)
Marsden, F.
Summerskill, Hn. Dr. Shirley


Griffiths, Will (Exchange)
Marshall, Dr. Edmund
Swain, Thomas


Grimond, Rt. Hn. J.
Meacher, Michael
Taverne, Dick


Hamilton, James (Bothwell)
Mellish, Rt. Hn. Robert
Thomas. Rt. Hn. George (Cardiff, W.)


Hamling, William
Mendelson, John
Thomas, Jeffrey (Abertillery)


Hannan, William (G'gow, Maryhill)
Millan, Bruce
Thomson, Rt. Hn. G. (Dundee, E.)


Hardy, Peter
Milne, Edward (Blyth)
Thorpe, Rt. Hn. Jeremy


Harrison, Walter (Wakefield)
Mitchell, R. C. (S'hampton, Itchen)
Torney, Tom


Hattersley, Roy
Morgan, Elystan (Cardiganshire)
Urwin, T. W.


Horam, John
Morris, Charles R. (Openshaw)
Weitzman, David


Houghton, Rt. Hn. Douglas
Morris, Rt. Hn. John (Aberavon)
Wellbeloved, James


Howell, Denis (Small Heath)
Murray, Ronald King
Whitehead, Phillip


Huckfield, Leslie
Ogden, Eric
Wilson, Rt. Hn. Harold (Huyton)


Hughes, Rt. Hn. Cledwyn (Anglesey)
O'Halloran, Michael
Woof, Robert


Hughes, Mark (Durham)
O'Malley, Brian



Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen, N.)
Orme, Stanley
TELLERS FOR THE NOES:


Hughes, Roy (Newport)
Oswald, Thomas
Mr. Alan Fitch and


Janner, Greville
Parry, Robert (Liverpool, Exchange)
Mr. Joseph Harper.


Jenkins, Rt. Hn. Roy (Stechford)

Ordered, That further consideration of the Bill, as amended, be now adjourned.—[Mr. Maudling.]

Bill, as amended, to be further considered Tomorrow.

HOUSING (WILLESDEN)

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. More.]

11.12 p.m.

Mr. Laurie Pavitt: The Adjournment debate provides an opportunity to raise matters which are of deep concern to constituents and which very often involve criticism of the Government. The matter I wish to raise this evening is one of profound and deep concern. However, I wish to begin by asking the hon. Gentleman who is to reply to convey to his Department and his officials the gratitude of a number of the people from my area on the way in

which over the last three years they have shown far more understanding of housing problems in Willesden than perhaps has the town hall. I have been most grateful for the help which I have received in this matter. When departmental officials deal with real problems and facts, one can often get from them a greater appreciation of practical solutions than one could hope to get when dealing with the matter in purely political terms.
I wish tonight to raise a problem that affects some 614 families in Willesden, West, who live in an area that was built up in the 1930s which is known as Curzon Crescent, involving several blocks of flats and some houses.
I will try to put the problem into context. My borough probably has the most appalling housing problem in the whole of London. In March 1969, I made a plea in this House in a similar kind of debate dealing with the policy of the Conservative Administration in the town hall at that time. I shall give


the House a number of facts and figures. At that time the number of people on the waiting list for accommodation was 6,943. Now, two years later, despite the pressure that was then applied, because the policy at the town hall did not change, the waiting list in my area is now 9,495, over 2,000 more than it was at that time. We operate a points scheme of allocation. In that waiting list there are 2,250 with points for medical disability; 350 are broken families, with children in one place and parents in another; 1,393 are illegally overcrowded. On 27th January, 1970, in answer to a Question from me, the Minister said that the number of designated slums was 554. In answer to another Question on 25th November, 1969, about housing starts, I was told:
There is likely to be a shortfall of 1,954 housing starts on Brent's original 1969 programme which was for 1,978 dwellings … I understand that it will be 24 only."—OFFICIAL REPORT, 25th November, 1969; Vol. 792, c. 56.]
It is that policy which has led to the present devastating situation.
An entirely new phenomenon, because of its size, is the heartbreak of homeless-ness. A few years ago, the country was disturbed by the television play "Cathy Come Home". There are 149 Cathys who cannot come home in my area—112 homeless families have been accommodated by the Department of Social Services and 37 by voluntary associations. Now, for the first time, because the problem is becoming unmanageable, 10 families have been boarded out in a guest house at the ratepayers' expense because there is no room at the inn.
There is nothing wrong with these families. They are normal families who have run into a bad patch and have no roof over their heads. The problem is aggravated because more than 100 houses have been cleared out to make way for a bypass, and in less than three weeks the remaining 17 homeless families who will be then displaced will have to be found homes. Tragedy after tragedy: broken home after broken home. My Friday night surgeries are one mass of marital problems and others arising from the fact that many families are sharing too little accommodation.
On the front page of my local paper, The Willesden Chronicle, last week was an attractive picture of two young child

ren who were left at the council's office at Brent House on Monday:
… council officials have been unable to find their mother … The younger child is aged about six months and was dressed in pink nylon rompers with a yellow woollen coat. The other child, who is aged 18 months to two years, was wearing red and white check rompers, a matching dress and yellow anarak.
Thanks to Mr. Eamonn Andrews and his television programme, we were able to trace the mother, but the family is still in need of a home. I pay tribute to Mr. H. Whalley, the Director of Social Services, who must be working day and night on the problem of the homeless.
It is the whole problem of housing to which I direct the Minister's attention, and particularly the rehabilitation of the council estate of Curzon Crescent. Curzon Crescent was a housing development of the 1930s, but for a variety of reasons it has sunk to the bottom of the heap of housing in my area. It has a predominant number, 47 per cent., of very large families. There are inadequate amenities and the area is unpopular and unloved. At the last survey, 71 per cent. of the residents wanted to get out.
I saw the Minister in 1969, and after negotiations with the local authority the Ministry gave the go-ahead for a solution to this problem which meant refurbishing block by block and bringing the whole thing up to modern standards at a cost of £2·3 million. The crux of the scheme was to bring this run-down area back to being part of the community. We wanted not just modern homes but proper amenities, neighbourhood facilities for children, sports facilities for young people and leisure facilities for the elderly. Most important of all, if we succeed in doing doing this this large area catering for 614 families could become part of the general housing provision of the area and not the end of the road for so many people, a cul de sac that no one wanted to get into in case they could not get out again.
The tragedy is that, having received support from the Ministry, there has been a lag in getting the scheme implemented. We have a situation where, because we cannot decant families elsewhere, the builders cannot move in. We had the Chalkhill Estate to which we could have decanted people from Curzon Crescent, but, with rents at £13 a week, it was impossible. The whole of the housing


programme in my area, including this refurbishing arrangement, has been put back five years. Because we had nowhere for people to go, the slum clearance, redevelopment and general improvement which is so necessary could not proceed.
I should like to quote one of the new councillors, Mrs. Mary Goudie, who has done a marvellous job and is heart and soul behind my constituents in her efforts to transform Curzon Crescent into a place worthy of them. Speaking of the present situation, she said:
There is still one family left in Dudley Court. The whole of the top end is like a ghost town, and those who are left are miserable. The children are breaking into the empty flats, and the parents are worried about fires and accidents.
This is typical of many areas which we want to redevelop in Willesden. For instance, I was in Melville Road on Sunday and found four houses out of a whole road in which people were still living. This means that we cannot get on with the necessary rebuilding for which sanction has been given. The delay is costly to the ratepayers and it is a bad thing for housing in Willesden.
I do not blame the Minister. I indict the previous council. If it had treated this project with proper backing from the start with contingent support work, Dudley Court would have been started months ago. The present timetable means that Dudley Court will now start in July, 1971, Dover Court in January, 1972, Pendennis Court in July, 1972, and Lul-worth Court in January, 1973. The whole of this timetable should have been brought forward so that we should have been seeing the area transformed into a delightful place 18 months from now.
Despite the many deserving areas to which the Minister has to give consideration, I ask him to give high priority to speeding up what we are trying to do in the Curzon Crescent project, to ensure that there is no delay in the Department in reaching decisions on matters put to him by the new Borough Council, which is anxious to solve the problem as quickly as possible, and to confirm that loan sanction on the present projection of costs is assured and that it will be eligible for a grant of 50 per cent.
If we could get 100 new houses taken over by the council capable of housing

large families with up to six children, it would be possible to decant people from the area and enable us to get on with the programme so much quicker and get rid of the boarded up derelict places which are a danger to the community.
The borough now has to make up for lost time. The previous council put the programme back at least five years. We need to weld into a neighbourhood entity a community which has been sharply divided into the "haves" of Wembley and the "have nots" of Willesden by the last council.
The symbol of success in our endeavours would be for people to be able to walk into Curzon Crescent with pride and say that it was a pleasure to live there. That has not been possible for a long time. That symbol of success is what I am seeking tonight. It is a matter to which the borough council is pledged. I wish it well in its endeavours.
I am grateful to the Minister for the understanding which he has shown in the past. I hope that he will translate his sympathy into some practical help.

11.25 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Paul Channon): The hon. Member for Willesden, West (Mr. Pavitt) is perfectly entitled to raise this matter in the House, and I shall do what I can to answer the points which he has made. He was kind enough, first, to pay a tribute to the officials in the Department, which I shall ensure is passed on and which, I am sure will be much appreciated.
What I shall not do—and I do not imagine that the hon. Gentleman will expect me to do so—is enter into the somewhat highly coloured and rather one-sided description, if I may say so, which the hon. Gentleman gave of events which took place in the London Borough of Brent over the past few years. The local elections in Brent are now over, and I do not think that it would be sensible for me to try to enter into local arguments which are entirely a matter for the London Borough of Brent. Neither will the hon. Gentleman expect me to accept all he said in criticism of the last Borough Council of Brent or go into the other troubled and deep waters upon which he embarked.
I come now to that part of the hon. Gentleman's speech in which he dealt with the general housing problem in London and in his own borough. I entirely accept that the Borough of Brent has some of the worst housing problems in London. Whether it be right to say that they are the worst in London I do not know. There are lots of places with really ghastly problems. Both my right hon. Friend and I have time and again urged a vigorous programme of both public authority housing and private housing in London, and of improvements, and, as the hon. Gentleman knows, we are reviewing all the housing subsidies in order to direct assistance to those areas and those people in the greatest need.
I believe that our new measures will be of great benefit to London, and I look forward to having the hon. Gentleman's enthusiastic support for them when they are announced to the House in due course. That will be the test of whether he is prepared to support a policy which will be of extreme benefit to London and his own borough, and I am sure that no hint of political dogma will prevent his giving the Government enthusiastic support when the reform of housing subsidies comes into operation.
My right hon. Friend announced his intention, also, to discuss with all the London boroughs and the Greater London Council the whole problem of London housing. The hon. Gentleman may wish to know, in regard to his own borough, that next week the leader of the council is to come to see me to discuss housing problems in Brent. I shall certainly take note of what the hon. Gentleman has said in his general points about housing problems there, and, no doubt, the leader of the council will wish to add to that and put his view to me.
I am only too anxious to do what I can in a difficult housing situation, regardless of who is in power—Labour, Conservative, Liberal, Communist or whatever it might be—and I assure the hon. Gentleman and the House that the Government are determined to help those areas and those people who are in the greatest need. I look forward to constructive discussions with London councils about these problems.
I come now to the specific problem of Curzon Crescent. One of the features of the Housing Act, 1969, which my right hon. Friends very much support, is that it places responsibilities for deciding a whole range of matters, including improvement schemes such as Curzon Crescent, on the local housing authority, with which it rightly belongs. In the case of applications for improvement grants from private owners and occupiers, the authority is given a virtually unrestricted right to decide whether, in a particular case, it is justifiable to spend public money in order to bring a building up to the 12-point standard, with which the hon. Gentleman will be familiar.
In the case of improvements which local authorities wish to carry out to their own property—Curzon Street is in this category—there is not quite the same measure of freedom. The authority has to obtain formal approval to any scheme before it is carried out, and the purpose here—which, I think, has been supported by both sides of the House—is to ensure that proper value for money is obtained for work to be financed entirely out of public funds, some part from central and some part from local government funds.
The factors which my Department takes into account are the standard to which the property should be improved, having regard to its potential life after improvement, and the extent and cost of the work proposed, and of course special attention is paid to repairs and replacement for which a Government contribution is being claimed. Local authorities are encouraged, in a circular issued by the Department, to discuss informally with its officers any projects under consideration, or at a very early stage in their planning, so that agreement is reached on the essential points, before formal approval is sought.
I wish to stress that this is the full extent of the control exercised by the Department. Once a scheme is formally approved, the timing is entirely a matter for the authority, and no special financial authority or loan sanction is needed. So provided that there has been adequate informal consultation at an early stage, no scheme need be held up by the need to obtain the Department's approval, which can be given very quickly.
Greater Exchequer assistance is given to local authorities and housing associations in the Greater London area because of the abundant evidence of past improvements and conversions carried out by these bodies. Although the Act provides normal maxima of £1,000 grant paid for improvement works, and £1,250 paid when acquisition and conversion is involved, these figures are doubled in London when the new dwellings have a life of at least 30 years.
In the case of Curzon Crescent, Brent Council followed the advice given in the circular. In the middle of 1968 the borough architect talked quite informally with officers of the Department, as he is in the habit of doing on many occasions about numerous housing matters. A full discussion ensued about the scheme and the Department's officers visited the estate. They even went back and had a look at it on a Sunday because they were told that the conditions of car parking in particular were very different at the weekend than they were in the middle of a working day.
It is no part of my brief to defend the decisions of the Labour Government, but I must point out that the worrying feature of the scheme at that time was the very heavy expenditure which it was proposed to incur on 536 dwellings which, as the hon. Gentleman pointed out, had been completed only just before the Second World War and which were providing much better accommodation than many other people were enjoying both in public and privately owned dwellings in this part of the borough.
The cost was going to come out at something like £4,000 per unit and there was going to be no increase in the number of units. There was going to be a lot of expensively planned car parking and there would have been lifts in all the blocks of flats, although they were only four storeys high. What had to be decided was whether this sort of expenditure was justified, bearing in mind both the situation in this particular estate and, indeed, housing conditions generally in that part of the borough.
The council was, therefore, quickly told of the Department's misgivings and was asked to think again, particularly about its original proposals for 100 per cent. car parking provision, much of

which was to be in semi-sunk garages costing a quarter of a million pounds, and about the necessity for all the lifts that were being ordered at a cost of something like £125,000. I understand it was the Department's view that these dwellings could be brought up to a good modern standard for a more modest expenditure. The Department set out in considerable detail the sort of items which it thought were reasonable and which could be supported by grant aid.
At this stage the council interpreted this advice as a formal rejection of the application and a deputation from the council discussed the matter with the then Parliamentary Secretary of the Ministry of Housing and Local Government, the hon. Member for Widnes (Mr. MacColl). The upshot of this was that there were further informal discussions at officer level and in January, 1970, the council came forward with substantial changes in its proposals. The semi-sunk car parking had been omitted and there was a more moderate provision for car parking and the number of lifts had been drastically reduced. The effect of this was to reduce the unit cost of the scheme from £4,000 to £1,858, and at this stage the Department felt able to give it formal approval.
Despite these considerable economies, the revised scheme produced very much improved dwellings. The kitchens were to be enlarged, with new fitments and windows, the solid fuel grates were to be removed and gas or electric heaters provided in the living rooms, with many other changes which I will not delay the House by detailing. In other words, these rather dilapidated and old-fashioned flats were being made into comfortable, serviceable units. The situation at this stage was, therefore, that the council was free to go ahead with its proposals. All that was needed was for it to obtain tenders and to provide vacant possession for the successful contractor to make a start.
For a number of reasons, perhaps not now worth going into, there was some delay in starting the work. My impression has always been that both the previous administration at Brent and, I believe, the present new administration are anxious to get ahead with this job. Where they have sought help from the Department, every effort has been made


to supply it. In particular, when it seemed that the result of the delay would be to increase the cost of the scheme over the contract price, my officers quickly and readily agreed to meet the Council's officers to see what could be done. A meeting was held on 26th May. The cost implications were examined and the council was told that formal approval would be given to a revised application based on a higher unit cost, and consequently eligible for a higher grant. I assure the hon. Gentleman that the way is once more open to Brent to press on with the scheme. Formal approval will be given to a revised application based on the matters I have outlined. It is not for me to defend the previous Administration in their attitude to this scheme. I understand the reasons for the attitude which prevailed at the time. Whether that decision was right or wrong is now past history. I now believe—much more important for the future—that no difficulties still remain.
I join with the hon. Member in expressing the hope that there will be no further delays. I hope that the Council will find ways and means of overcoming rehousing problems which exist in this particular area. As the council will know, Government help is available for this in the shape of loan sanction for the purchase of properties on the open market. This may be one method of providing accommodation for those displaced from Curzon Crescent. It is for the Borough of Brent to decide what it does about this, and how and when it does it. It is not for me to say how Brent should do it. It is a matter for the local authoriy to decide what it considers to be the best way of dealing with the problem now.
I am sure that everyone wishes that the work which has gone into this exercise will result as quickly as possible in the provision of new and better homes for some 500-odd tenants. After all, this is the object of the policy of improving housing which the Government are pursuing energetically and which all political parties support, and about which the hon. Member is keenly enthusiastic.
There is no reason whatsoever why there should now be delay in this matter. I hope that all concerned will do their utmost to press ahead. I think that there are no difficulties. If there are any, I hope that the hon. Member will be in touch with me about them.
In conclusion, my right hon. Friends have asked the London authorities to increase both their new building and improvement programmes, to encourage private enterprise and housing associations to play their part in dealing both with the overall shortage of dwellings in London and the need to improve much of the existing stock.
As I have told the hon. Member, we are to have a conference on London later this year, and I am to see the leader of his borough very shortly. We are determined to do what lies within our power to help tackle the very serious difficulty existing in London and which exists certainly in the hon. Member's borough.
I am very sorry to hear of the increased he mentioned in his opening remarks. This is a very serious matter indeed, and it will be one of the matters that my right hon. Friend will wish to discuss with the boroughs when the conference is held. As the hon. Member will know, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Social Services set up a working party to consider this matter, and its first report has been published. Consultations are now taking place on the contents of the report.
I assure the hon. Member that the Government are only too anxious to tackle these problems. They are exceedingly difficult and will not be solved lightly by people of any political persuasion. They can only be solved by a real exercise of will by all those involved. The Government are determined to play their part. I hope that the Borough of Brent will play its part. I am sure that the hon. Member will act as gadfly to both parties to ensure that they do.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at twenty-one minutes to Twelve o'clock.